Three rickshaw men from Tokyo will embark on a round-the-world trip on Monday, taking turns pulling a rickshaw over five continents in around three years. The men - Yuji Suzuki, 26; Ken Hirano, 26; and Keisuke Takahashi, 25 - are all hoping to inform those who do not have a chance to visit Japan about Japanese culture and the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo.

Tokyo stole the show at the Olympic closing ceremony in Rio de Janeiro this week as the event's next host city prepares for a cultural charm offensive ahead of the 2020 Games. In a surprise move, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dressed up as Super Mario at the ceremony

Now that I have been elected Governor of Tokyo, which will host the 2020 Games, I am quickly preparing myself and my team for the grueling tests of management that lie ahead of us. In particular, we must become world-class cost-control accountants, so that the Games are a success not just for the athletes, but also for the citizens of Tokyo and all Japanese. We want to take pride in our Games, and we cannot do that if we hobble future generations with debt.

The Sochi Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games have ended. The opening ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is still more than six years away. As the Tokyo Organizing Committee is forming, this seems like an appropriate moment to think about Tokyo in terms of the recent Sochi experience.

Emperor Akihito, on the occasion of his 80th birthday on Monday, repeated his intention to do his best amid expectations that he will hand over some of his official duties to the younger generation in the year after next. “While accepting the limits arising from age, I hope to continue to fulfill my role as best I can,” the Emperor said at a customary press conference Wednesday ahead of his birthday.

If Tokyo’s reaction to winning the 2020 Olympics, especially among the cash-strapped TV stations and other media types who rely on bread and circuses-type events to pay the bills, made you feel like Alice in Wonderland or a character in a Samuel Beckett play, you’re not alone. Well beyond the drawbridge of Old Edo, where the other roughly 90 percent of the country lives, the general feeling was a mixture of “Good for you” and “Don’t forget the victims of Tohoku and that problem in Fukushima. You know, the one you told the world was under control?”