Back where it all started: Tokyo celebrates one-year anniversary of hosting Olympic Games
With a crowd at the National Stadium this time, exactly a year after the Tokyo 2020 Opening Ceremony in 2021, hosts remember an unprecedented Games that faced challenge after challenge - and what it could have been.
Saturday (23 July 2022) was a glimpse of what the Tokyo 2020 could have been.
Exactly one year on from the opening of the Olympic Games in 2021, some things haven't changed.
Yes, it's still scorching hot and sticky humid in Tokyo. And yes, Covid is still around, with numbers higher than ever, not only in Tokyo but all around Japan.
But on Saturday at the Olympic Stadium, where Naomi Osaka lit the Cauldron a year ago at the Opening Ceremony, there was an actual crowd of 15,000 on hand to watch the anniversary ceremony, featuring 200 of their favourite Olympians take part in a parade and fun relay.
That alone was far more than what they were able to watch last summer, when spectators were not allowed at the Games because of Covid-19 countermeasures.
The anniversary ceremony began with a moment of silence observed for the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whose death two weeks ago stunned a nation.
Abe was Prime Minister at the time of Tokyo's successful bid in 2013 and oversaw the Games' postponement in March 2020. He was given the Olympic Order that November.
In a taped message to the audience, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said Tokyo 2020 would not have been possible without Abe against the backdrop of a global pandemic of unseen proportions.
"These were a historic Games and it took an unprecedented, historic effort from all of us to make them happen," Bach said.
"One of the driving forces who made it happen was former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who so tragically lost his life earlier this month.
"Without his vision and determination. these Olympic Games would never have happened. He was there at the very beginning, when these Games were awarded to Tokyo in 2013. And he was there, when he took the historic decision to postpone the Olympic Games by one year because of the global pandemic.
"Therefore, we owe him all our respect and gratitude - especially today, because we celebrate the one-year mark since the start of these historic Games."
Bach went on to hail the organisation of the first postponed Games in history, also the first major global sporting event to be held during the pandemic.
Despite the absence of fans, Tokyo delivered a Games in 2021 without an outbreak of infections all the while adding five new sports, three of which are here to stay for Paris 2024 after their rousing success - skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing.
"At Tokyo 2020, the entire world came together for the first time since the pandemic began," Bach said.
"Billions of people around the world followed these Olympic Games, admiring this great achievement made possible by Japan and the Olympic movement."
With the baton having been passed on to Paris now two years down the line, Tokyo Gov. Koike Yuriko unveiled a new slogan for a city looking ahead and not in the rearview mirror - "Tokyo Forward."
"Tokyo succeeded as a safe and secure Games," Koike said. "And through it all, we are at the start of something new.
"In 2025, this National Stadium will host the world athletics championships. Our concept is 'Tokyo Forward'. Let us build a new future through sport."