The athletes will be waving to television cameras rather than fans on Friday. Archery and rowing events start the day’s competitions.
Current time in Tokyo: July 23, 8:30 a.m. The athletes will be waving to television cameras rather than fans on Friday. Archery and rowing events start the day’s competitions. How to watch the opening ceremony. In photos: athletes, officials and volunteers prepare for the Games’ official start. Jill Biden arrived in Tokyo on a mission to stoke enthusiasm and stop the virus. Jill Biden arrived in Japan on Thursday for the opening of the Tokyo Olympics on her first international trip alone as first lady, a two-day mission geared at generating enthusiasm for an event shadowed and shackled by the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Biden flew into the Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, where she was met by a Japanese diplomatic delegation before heading in a motorcade to the Akasaka Palace for a scheduled dinner with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and his wife, Mariko Suga. Her trip came as Covid-19 infections in Japan, fueled by the contagious Delta variant, hit a six-month high, according to The Associated Press. Dr. Biden, leading a scaled-back U.S. delegation, was scheduled to meet Ms. Suga at the palace on Friday morning, followed by a “virtual get-together” with members of the U.S. Olympic team and culminating with her attendance at the opening ceremony at Olympic Stadium. Dr. Biden’s role in Tokyo is a familiar one for a political spouse who was often expected to project warmth and enthusiasm on behalf of her husband during a 2020 campaign in which public events, if staged at all, were sanitized and socially distanced. The organizers of this year’s games have banned alcohol in the venues, strictly limited attendance at most events and imposed other restrictions on the behavior of fans to limit the spread of the virus. Late Wednesday, during a refueling stopover in Anchorage en route to Japan, Dr. Biden made an impassioned plea for Alaskans to get vaccinated to save lives and speed the return to normality. “Even as we celebrate the progress we’ve made, we know that this last push is the hardest of all,” Dr. Biden said. “Recently, a woman came up to me to thank me for the work our administration has done to get shots in arms,” she added. “She fought back tears when she told me that she lost four family members to Covid last year. Four.” — Glenn Thrush Friday brings what is usually a celebratory highlight of any Olympic Games, the opening ceremony.
