Kazuyoshi Funaki jumps to victory in the individual normal hill ski-jumping event at the Winter Asian Games. (Jiji)

The Fifth Winter Asian Games, Asia's sports festival of snow and ice, are being held from February 1 to 8 in Aomori Prefecture, located on the northernmost tip of Japan's main island of Honshu. Over 1,000 athletes and officials from a record 28 nations and regions are participating. Host nation Japan has assembled its finest athletes and is hoping to lead the gold rush. As this is the first time that an international sporting event has been held in Aomori, the prefecture is in a welcoming mood.

Third Hosting by Japan after a 13-year Hiatus
This is the third time the Winter Asian Games have been held in Japan, and the first time in 13 years. The first and second games were held in 1986 and 1990 in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido. This time around, 54 contests are being held in five sports: skiing, skating, ice hockey, biathlon, and curling. The competition is going on in six venues spread around the prefecture: Aomori City, Misawa City, Hachinohe City, Ajigasawa Town, Owani Town, and Iwaki Town.

Projected operating expenses for the event ballooned all the way from an initial estimate of ¥800 million ($6.6 million at ¥120 to the dollar) to ¥5.6 billion ($46 million), and for a time there was a danger that the games would be called off. Eventually, though, the organizers managed to trim the costs to ¥3.9 billion ($32.5 million), and sufficient funding was secured. The Aoi-mori Arena, newly built by the city of Aomori, was the stage for the opening ceremony on February 1 and will also be used for the closing ceremony on February 8.

One of the big stories of the games is the participation of North Korea. The last time this nation competed in the Winter Asian Games was the 1990 Sapporo event. But it was welcomed back into the international sports arena at the summer 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the autumn 2002 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea. Twelve other countries and regions, including Macao, Malaysia, Palestine, Bhutan, and East Timor, have sent officials but no athletes. Given that some of these lands are warm year-round, this is not too surprising. It is said of that Olympics that the meaning lies in participation, not in winning a medal. In the case of Asia's winter sports festival, evidently there is also meaning in sending officials even when you have no athletes ready to compete.

Japan Gears Up for a Comeback
The intent of the Asian Winter Games is to strengthen Asia's performance in winter sports, and originally Japan, which hosted the first two games and also had experience staging the Olympics, was the chief cheerleader. But while Japan won more gold medals than any other country in the first two events in Sapporo, it slipped to third place in the battle for gold at the third games in Harbin, China, falling behind China and Kazakhstan. And in the 1999 Games in Kangwon, South Korea, Japan fell back to fourth behind China, South Korea, and Kazakhstan.

This time, however, Japan is intent on a comeback. Toward this end, it has ironed out scheduling conflicts to make sure that as many of its best athletes as possible are on hand. Included on its team of some 150 athletes are Hiroyasu Shimizu, world-record holder in the men's 500-meter speed-skating event and winner of a gold medal at the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998 and a silver at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002; Kazuyoshi Funaki, gold medalist in a ski-jumping event at Nagano; and Tae Satoya, medalist at the last two Winter Olympics in the freestyle skiing women's moguls competition. With athletes like these participating, spectators can expect to see world-class power and technique.

The Tohoku Shinkansen (bullet train), which runs north from Tokyo, now has a new section running from Morioka in Iwate Prefecture to Hachinohe in Aomori. This is also good news for visitors, since they can get to Aomori more quickly. Now the prefecture's residents have begun greeting the crowds who have come to see what is going on.