Mr. Sato gets closer to Olympic gold than he ever dreamed possible.

With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics less than a year away, we can expect Olympic fever to gain some serious momentum from here on out. For example, a very brief showing of the actual bronze, silver, and gold medals at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building drew a big crowd as our reporter Mr. Sato found out.

Even arriving at the same time that the venue opened, Mr. Sato was confronted with a lineup dozens of people long.

There were actually two lines, one for the medals and the other for the torch. The medal line was longer, and Mr. Sato too decided to wait for those first in order to come face to face with a gold medal.

Probably because of the early hours, there were mostly elderly people waiting, all with various image-capturing devices from smartphones to SLR cameras.

Mr. Sato couldn’t blame them, this would probably be the closest he ever gets to an Olympic medal and he planned to take as many pictures as he could before spending the rest of the time burning their image into his brain.

After waiting in a line of about 20 or 30 people for 15 minutes, he finally got his chance to see one of each class of Olympic medal for the 2020 Games.

▼ Bronze (front)

▼ Silver (front)

▼ Gold (back)

Or course, Mr. Sato did want to see both sides of the medal, but wondered why they decided to show the back of the gold one instead of the bronze or silver.

He finished up his shooting quickly so as not to hold up the line that was steadily building behind him. Then, he headed right over to the torch line. Here visitors can actually hold the torch, and the staff will take their pictures.

Mr. Sato felt bad that those poor workers were forced to take people’s pictures all day long, so he tried to make them smile with some signature Sato mugging for the camera.

It worked, and Mr. Sato could walk away feeling genuinely happy about his moment with the Olympic torch.

Actually, he might still get another chance with it, because he applied to become a torch runner for his home prefecture of Shimane. And since Shimane isn’t exactly a hotbed of celebrity, Mr. Sato has a fairly realistic shot of getting accepted there.

It’d be a huge leap for the man who only seven years ago attempted to eat 1,000 slices of processed cheese to become an Olympic torch runner.

But even if he doesn’t make the cut, this experience was the next best thing.

Anyone else in the Tokyo area can too by getting to the Tokyo Municipal Government Building for this exhibit. The medal display ends on 31 July, but the torch can be seen until 25 August, so don’t just sit there discus-ing it. Sprint on down and taekwondo-s pictures of yourself holding the torch too.

Photos: SoraNews24
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