For a young Emiri Iwamoto, experiencing the Olympics in her hometown and meeting the athletes changed the course of her life.

Seeing the 1998 Nagano Winter Games firsthand at age 5, Iwamoto decided to pursue a teaching career to contribute to education for international understanding during her college days.  

She kept her promise and has been devoting herself to nurturing “children who can take action to make the world better.”

Now, she teaches in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture. 

As prospects for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics scheduled for this summer are increasingly clouded by the novel coronavirus crisis, Iwamoto, now 28, has mixed feelings about whether they should be held.

While understanding the grim reality in the time of the pandemic, she still wants her pupils to “take on an experience that could prove to be a good guide for their life,” like she did.

On May 13, Iwamoto was teaching a class of 30 fifth-graders at the Ueda city-run Maruko-Chuo Elementary School in her seventh year as an educator.

When she asked the students “what people all over the world are looking forward to this summer,” the answer “the end of the coronavirus outbreak” came first. They cited “the Olympics” next.

Iwamoto told the children that preparations for the Tokyo Games are being made in line with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and encouraged them to think of what they can do to fulfill the objectives.

The pupils proposed various ideas, such as “carrying a shopping bag around with me” and “not having parents buy unnecessary things.”

When the Nagano Games took place, Iwamoto's family home in Nagano was a 20-minute walk from the Olympic Village. She presented athletes there with origami “hina” dolls and received key rings and pins in return.

Entering an elementary school, Iwamoto took part in the “one-school, one-country program” under which students at elementary and junior high schools in Nagano study the cultures of different states or regions.

The elementary school of Iwamoto continued to interact with Bosnia and Herzegovina even following the end of the Winter Games. When she was a sixth-grader, Iwamoto visited the nation with teachers and others.

A civil war had ended several years before in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time. Seeing newly erected buildings and lively smiles on children’s faces in town, Iwamoto felt the nation was speeding toward reconstruction.

Iwamoto, though, also found scars left by the warfare in every corner of the country.

While facilities connected to the 1984 Winter Games remained in Sarajevo, traces of an artillery round were seen near the Olympics logo on the outer wall of a hotel in a commercial district.

At a soccer field next to the Olympics skating venue were grave markers for those killed in the civil war.

When passing through war relics, a guide said “land mines may still remain inside the fence.” Iwamoto got goose bumps hearing that.

To her amazement, a local elementary school was providing “lessons on mines” to protect children.

Iwamoto became interested in the issues of wars and refugees overseas and began thinking of contributing to the global community in the future. She was so impressed by the phrase “the world can be changed through education” in a book she read during her college days that Iwamoto decided to become a teacher.

She started working at an elementary school in Nagano Prefecture in 2015 and is responsible for fifth-graders from April this year.

TOKYO GAMES IN TROUBLE

Although Iwamoto wanted to allow her students to “have exchanges with those from overseas in the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics,” the novel coronavirus outbreak rendered it difficult to come in contact with people from outside Japan.

About 80 percent of her children raised their hands to agree that the Summer Games “should not be held,” while a student expressed anxiety over “the mutated strains.”

In response, Iwamoto said it will “not be good to organize the event by mobilizing doctors and nurses despite the tough situations at hospitals.” But she murmured, “I cannot say whether I am for or against the Games.”