Yoshio Kanazawa doesn't feel excited or proud when he hears the constant beeping of his mobile phone signaling that another Japanese athlete has won an Olympic medal. 

In his tiny room at a cheap lodging house in Tokyo’s Sanya district, the notifications as Japan's record-breaking medal rush continues are an irritation to the unemployed 53-year-old man. 

“And they keep coming more and more,” Kanazawa said. “I feel nothing for them.”

The notification he has been waiting for is something much more meaningful to him--an offer of employment.

Kanazawa is on welfare and is living hand to mouth.

Over the past two years, he has resided in a 3-tatami-mat size room at one of 140 or so flophouses packed in a corner of the metropolis.

Kanazawa, originally from Ibaraki Prefecture, used to be employed as a demolition worker. But after he suffered a herniated disc and injured his legs and hips, it became difficult for him to find work.

He once slept in front of the Hachiko statue at Shibuya Station, a landmark in Tokyo’s Shibuya district.

Typical rates for a single occupancy room in the Sanya district in Taito Ward, like Kanazawa’s, run between 2,000 yen ($18) and 3,000 yen.

According to a survey conducted by the metropolitan government in fiscal 2018, approximately 3,800 people lived in Sanya. Of these, 90 percent were on social welfare.

Kanazawa pays for his accommodations and cellphone bills. After those, he only has a few tens of thousands of yen left to live on for a month.

White rice and natto (fermented soybeans) are his primary sustenance.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is not much contact among the tenants, Kanazawa said.

Earlier this year, a resident on his floor tested positive for the novel coronavirus, prompting a ban on tenants from visiting one another.

Alone in his room, Kanazawa watched the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on TV, which included a fleet of drones hovering in a spectacular light show above the National Stadium.

“That drone thing was beautiful,” he said.

LIVING IN PARALLEL WORLD TO OLYMPICS

International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams drew much flak on social media from remarks he made during a July 29 news conference.

He said athletes and staff of the Olympics are subject to strict infection controls and are “living in a different parallel world” so that the Games have little to do with the skyrocketing COVID-19 cases in Tokyo.

Many on social media reacted to the IOC’s take, saying it was insensitive and out of touch.

But some Tokyoites, particularly those living in Sanya, known as a habitat of day laborers and low-income residents, might agree with Adams and would say--although for a much different reason--that the Olympics are taking place in a parallel world.

“The Olympics? They don’t make the headlines here,” said Wataru Oya, 60.

Oya lives in a Sanya lodging, only 150 meters away from the building where Kanazawa resides.

“People like me are cut out of the loop,” Oya said about the buzz surrounding the Games.

Oya is a relatively newcomer to Sanya, having moved in the domicile this summer. In fact, the Tokyo Olympics used to be close to his heart.

Oya launched a website production company about a dozen years ago, employing about 10 people. The company conducted business with major companies, such as a manufacturing firm and a bank.

In 2013, after Tokyo won the bid to host the 2020 Summer Games, Oya’s company started accepting more Olympic-related work.

But he became stressed out, suffered depression, had problems with drinking and became hospitalized on and off, he said. His company went bankrupt, and he has since lived apart from his family.

Now, staying in a 3-tatami-mat size room in Sanya, Oya still wonders, “What if I still ran the company?”

He has registered at three job-search websites.

“I want to work, starting any day now,” he said.

NOT THE SAME TOKYO AS 1964

Some of the old guard in Sanya remember what it was like the last time Tokyo hosted the Games more than a half-century ago.

Tetsuo Kiyama, 70, the owner of a cheap lodging house, grew up in Sanya and vividly remembers the day the 1964 Tokyo Olympics’ torch relay passed through the densely settled neighborhood.

Back in those days, day laborers were in high demand for building urban infrastructure.

“Throngs of people flooded the streets from early morning,” Kiyama recalled.

But this time, with the Olympics, Sanya remains lifeless.

The occupancy rate of Kiyama’s lodging is about 30 percent of normal times, he said. Foreign tourists disappeared because of the pandemic.

“It was supposed to be fully booked by repeat guests from abroad coming for the Olympics,” Kiyama lamented.

OLYMPIC VILLAGE ‘MERE LODGING’

The feeling of being “left out” is also shared among struggling workers outside Sanya.

A man in his 60s would always take a sideways glance at the Olympic Village where the athletes are staying, while driving to work at a construction site of an apartment building in Tokyo.

He was a lower-tier subcontractor that built one of the high-rise buildings accommodating Olympians.

He worked at the construction site from 2019 to 2020. When he joined the project, there was already a delay in the construction schedule.

He and other workers were told to speed up their work to complete the building. The working environment was far from safe.

Under the blazing summer sun, they had to walk on steel sheets. Massive construction materials were hoisted up by a crane and hovered around above them. He witnessed concrete being mixed in downpours.

Any of these situations would not occur at a normal construction site.

But there was an unspoken agreement among workers to turn a blind eye to urgent measures to finish the work, he said.

It was all for the benefit of the athletes, providing a space for international exchanges.

But under the pandemic, the athletes are not allowed to check in at the village until five days before their competition and are ordered to vacate within two days after they finish their competition.

“It has become a mere lodging. I feel sad,” he said.

He remembers the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He saw the Olympic torch bearers and was glued to the TV to watch athletes competing.

This time, he had anticipated a booming economy resulting from the economic effects of the capital hosting the Games.

“But nothing happened. We were let down,” he said. 

People in the construction industry are fighting over work, which has been reduced significantly under the pandemic, for less pay.

Both the current and former prime ministers insisted that the Tokyo Olympics have to be held as “proof that human beings have defeated the novel coronavirus.”

As the man sees it, “We haven’t defeated anything.”

He sees from afar the Olympic Village building he helped to build. Then he wonders, who are staying there and which country are they representing?

(This article was written by Takashi Ogawa and Ari Hirayama.)