东京——经过长达一年的拖延和数月的焦虑，席卷了一个受大流行影响的世界，一场不同于以往的夏季奥运会即将到来。这是一个奥林匹克运动会当然，但也是非常真实的，完全不同的东西。
没有外国粉丝。东京地区的场馆没有本地观众。在仍然有限的疫苗接种运动中，一群不情愿的民众在病毒病例激增中导航。运动员和他们的随从被限制在一个准泡沫中，面临被驱逐出境的威胁。政府看管人员和监控应用程序试图——至少在理论上——追踪游客的一举一动。限制或禁止饮酒。文化交流，这种为大多数奥运会提供现场能量的交流，完全不存在。
像电流一样流过这一切:对新冠肺炎在这里和世界各地带来的苦难和流离失所感的不可逃避的了解。
所有迹象都指向一场完全超现实和原子化的奥运会，一场将在奥运会和残奥会期间把日本分成两个世界的奥运会。
一方面，日本大部分基本上没有接种疫苗、越来越不满的民众将继续熬过一个世纪以来最严重的疫情，除了在电视上看到的景象，他们几乎完全与东京奥运会的景象隔离开来。疾病和康复，工作和娱乐，都被严格的病毒限制所限制:生活，就像现在这样，将在这里继续。
与此同时，在大规模(而且非常昂贵)封闭的体育馆里，接种了疫苗的超级运动员，以及让奥运会得以进行的大批记者、国际奥委会官员、志愿者和管理人员，将尽最大努力专注于为数十亿狂热而遥远的观众服务的体育项目。
自从2020年大流行取消了原定的版本后，日本媒体就对奥运会念念不忘。它们真的会发生吗?如果是这样，它们会是什么样子?在一场看似慢动作的国家灾难期间举办奥运会的前景无休止地引人入胜——对这里的许多人来说确实令人震惊——几乎像病毒一样彻底地渗透到了社会中。
《朝日新闻》在最近的一篇社论中说:“认为奥运会可以通过武力来推进，每个人都应该遵守秩序的心态，导致了这场混乱。国际奥委会和日本官员“应该知道，他们的荒谬行为加深了公众对奥运会的不信任。”
当然，现在预测这些交叉潮流在奥运会期间到底会发生什么还为时过早，因为大约有15000名运动员，据一些人估计，还有近70000名官员、媒体和其他参与者，以隔离和有限但无处不在的方式融入东京的生活。
通常热情好客的日本人会对游客感到温暖，还是在看着完全接种疫苗的客人享受自2020年初以来从未体验过的自由时变得越来越愤怒?奥运选手和其他人会按照旨在保护他们正在访问的国家的规则比赛吗?他们会带来会在日本传播的变种吗?战胜冠状病毒的努力会受阻吗?
有一点似乎是肯定的:这些比赛将远不如世界对奥运会的期待，在球迷、运动员和当地人的庆祝和文化交流中，奥运会吸引人的最高水平的人类竞争混合在一起。
通常，奥运会是一个充满活力的时刻——一个为渴望向世界展示其魅力的主办城市举办的为期两周的聚会。他们挤满了游客，充满了异国情调的地方和有趣的游客带来的所有乐趣。这个回合。然而，将严格为电视编排，持怀疑态度的日本人民基本上被孤立，因为又一个紧急状态对他们的日常生活施加了更多的限制。
外国游客关注的奥运故事也将与中国街头的现实大不相同。
除非发生灾难，否则国际奥委会、当地报纸(其中许多也是赞助商)、日本电视台以及像美国全国广播公司这样的权利持有人可能会统一他们的信息:仅仅是通过将被视为一种胜利。
然而，没有多少来访的记者会在重症监护室逗留或追踪采访愤怒的居民，他们觉得奥运会是为了让国际奥委会能够筹集数十亿的电视资金而举到全国来的。
更有可能的是，将会有大量为电视制作的日本旅游书籍版本的图像，这种图像将古代历史、传统和自然美景的镜头与高科技、未来主义的感性相结合:例如，想象一列光滑的银色子弹头列车飞驰而过白雪皑皑的富士山。换句话说，这是一个充斥着易于消化的陈词滥调和可预测的既定镜头的现实。
随着东京在未来几周努力应对这些流行病奥运会的内在奇怪之处，这里的许多人将很难错过体育与疾病、言论与现实、游客与当地居民之间的脱节。
然而，一个不情愿的日本将如何经受未来几年可能定义冠状病毒大流行的高风险实验，必须等到游客收拾行李回家。只有到那时，主办国必须为这些超现实游戏付出的真正代价才会成为焦点。
Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
TOKYO -- After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. It's anOlympics, sure, but also, in a very real way, something quite different.
No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. A reluctant populace navigating a surge of virus cases amid a still-limited vaccination campaign. Athletes and their entourages confined to a quasi-bubble, under threat of deportation. Government minders and monitoring apps trying — in theory, at least — to track visitors’ every move. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, completely absent.
And running like an electric current through it all: the inescapable knowledge of the suffering and sense of displacement that COVID-19 has ushered in, both here and around the world.
All signs point to an utterly surreal and atomized Games, one that will divide Japan into two worlds during the month of Olympics and Paralympics competition.
On one side, most of Japan’s largely unvaccinated, increasingly resentful populace will continue soldiering on through the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century, almost entirely separated from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games aside from what they see on TV. Illness and recovery, work and play, both curtailed by strict virus restrictions: Life, such as it is, will go on here.
Meanwhile, in massive (and massively expensive) locked-down stadiums, vaccinated super-athletes, and the legions of reporters, IOC officials, volunteers and handlers that make the Games go, will do their best to concentrate on sports served up to a rapt and remote audience of billions.
Since the pandemic canceled the originally scheduled version in 2020, the Japanese media have been obsessed with the Games. Will they really happen? If so, what will they look like? And the endlessly fascinating — shocking, really, to many here — prospect of staging an Olympics during what can seem like a slow-motion national disaster has permeated the society nearly as thoroughly as the virus.
“The mindset that the Olympics can be pushed through by force and that everyone should obey the order has invited this mess,” the Asahi newspaper said in a recent editorial. IOC and Japanese officials “should learn that their absurdity has deepened the public distrust in the Olympics.”
Of course, it's too early to predict what, exactly, will happen when these cross-currents converge during the Games, as about 15,000 athletes and, by some estimates, nearly 70,000 officials, media and other participants insert themselves into the flow of Tokyo life in sequestered and limited, yet ubiquitous, ways.
Will the normally hospitable Japanese people warm to the visitors or become increasingly infuriated as they watch fully vaccinated guests enjoy freedoms they haven’t experienced since early 2020? Will the Olympians and others play by the rules meant to protect the country they’re visiting? Will they bring in variants that will spread through Japan? Will the effort to vanquish the coronavirus be impeded?
One thing seems certain: These games will have far less of what the world has come to expect from the Olympics, with its attractive mixture of human competition at the highest level amid celebrations and cultural exchanges on the sidelines by fans, athletes and local people.
Usually, the Olympics are a vibrant time — a two-week party for a host city eager to show the world its charms. They teem with tourists and all the fun that an exotic locale and interesting visitors can bring. This go-round. though, will be strictly choreographed for TV, with the skeptical people of Japan largely isolated as yet another state of emergency places more constraints on their daily lives.
The story that foreign visitors focus on for these Games will also be very different from the reality on the nation’s streets.
Barring catastrophe, the IOC, local newspapers (many of which are also sponsors), Japanese TV, and rights holders like NBC will likely be unified in their message: Just getting through will be cast as a triumph.
Not many visiting journalists, however, will linger in ICUs or chase down interviews with angry residents who feel these Games were hoisted onto the nation so that the IOC could collect its billions in TV money.
More likely, there will be plenty of made-for-TV images of a tour-book version of Japan, one that mixes shots of ancient history, tradition and natural beauty with a high-tech, futuristic sensibility: Think of a sleek, silver bullet train, for instance, streaking past a snow-capped Mount Fuji. A reality, in other words, riddled with easy-to-digest cliches and predictable establishing shots.
As Tokyo grapples in coming weeks with the intrinsic oddness of these pandemic Olympics, the disconnect between sports and sickness, rhetoric and reality, visitor and local will be hard to miss for many here.
Just how a reluctant Japan will weather a high-risk experiment that might come to define the coronavirus pandemic in future years, however, must wait until the visitors pack up and go home. Only then will the true price that the host nation must pay for these Surreal Games come into focus.
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Foster Klug, the AP's news director for Japan, the Koreas, Australia and the South Pacific, has covered Asia since 2005 and is based in Tokyo. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/APKlug
