Asian Games cruise ship and wooden huts will be 'unique experience'
The Asian Games will be held in Nagoya and the wider Aichi region in Japan from September 19 to October 4 (Yuichi YAMAZAKI) Athletes at the Asian Games in Japan will have "a unique experience" staying on a cruise ship and in wooden containers, an organising official told AFP six months out from the event, but acknowledged there were concerns about the plan. About half of the expected 15,000 athletes and officials will live in the eye-catching temporary accommodation during the Games, which are in Nagoya and the wider Aichi area from September 19 to October 4 -- coinciding with typhoon season in Japan. The rest will stay in hotels, including in Tokyo, where swimming, diving and equestrian events are taking place.
Organisers say using the cruise ship and container units are cheaper than building a traditional athletes' village, although they admit the unusual approach has raised eyebrows. Kazuhiro Yagi, vice-secretary general of the Aichi-Nagoya Games organising committee, told AFP that the accommodation would offer "an experience that's difficult to come by". "If people were going to live there long-term, that would be a different story," he said.
"But in this case it's a very limited period and athletes will spend much of their time training and then come back simply to rest. "I would like them to go back home having had a unique experience," he added. Between 4,000 and 5,000 athletes and officials will stay on the Italian cruise ship Costa Serena, which will be docked at Nagoya Port during the Games.
The vessel, which features 571 cabins, seven swimming pools, eight restaurants and nine bars, is being chartered at a cost of about 4. 5 billion yen ($28 million), said Yagi. According to the official website, the ship has "an elegant, surprising, ironic and magnetic soul".
It is a sister ship of the Costa Concordia, which sank off Tuscany in 2012, killing 32 people. A further 2,000 athletes and officials will stay in wooden shipping container-style huts in Nagoya's Garden Pier area. Some of the units, which Yagi says are "essentially brand new", have already been installed.