With the Asian Games officially set to begin on Saturday with the opening ceremony, athletes landing in Japan for the Games in Aichi and Nagoya have been grumbling about organisational chaos and the quality of their accommodations. But even the home contingent athletes have not been spared the nightmare, after a report by Reuters claimed that Japanese athletes were being forced to look at alternative arrangements because of instances where male and female athletes were allocated shared rooms.

“There have been cases where coaches, team officials, and athletes have been assigned to the same room. There are also situations where room assignments were made purely based on the numbers, such as assigning five twin rooms for a group of five men and five women. While the numbers match on paper, practically ⁠it creates challenging situations ⁠such as men and women being assigned together, coaches being assigned with athletes, or trainers who need to accommodate ⁠a lot of ‌medical equipment being assigned together,” Japan’s ​deputy ​Chef de Mission Hisashi Mizutori told a news ⁠conference in Japan on Thursday.

“We ⁠are currently working to coordinate and negotiate adjustments wherever possible. For cases where that proves too difficult, we are considering using ​the backup accommodations that Team Japan prepared in advance as alternatives,” he went on to add.

Story continues below.
Subscribe to see fewer ads.

The Games have already seen complaints from athletes from other nations. These include transport from airport being jammed due to computer system failures of not registering names, players having to sleep on the floor at airport after not getting accommodation for hours, and buses ferrying athletes getting lost on the way to the training ground.

The Asian Games will have around 17,000 competitors and officials massing in Japan. The organisers have resorted to creative living arrangements for the visiting contingents rather than have a unified athlete village. An Italian cruise ship, Costa Serena, will ⁠host 4,000 ​participants and arrived at Nagoya on Tuesday. Another 2,000 athletes and officials will spend their Games living in shipping-container style huts in the dock area of Japan’s biggest port.

“Since the cruise ship village opened yesterday (Wednesday), athletes have been arriving and going through the entry procedures,” Mizutori added. “However, the process took a significant amount of time, and due to issues with activation of their credentials, we ‌have received reports that some athletes were left waiting for several hours.”

The local organising committee (LOC) of Aichi-Nagoya 2026 have blamed the accommodation issues to some sports being added late to the Games program. The organisers were initially expecting about 15,000 ‌athletes and officials for the Games.

Story continues below this ad

In a joint statement with the Olympic Council ‌of Asia (OCA) last week, ​the Aichi-Nagoya ​Asian Games ​Organising Committee said numbers would be capped at 17,000 with all of those guaranteed a place to stay.


Mizutori said the ​Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) had anticipated accommodation “challenges” and had secured ⁠hotel rooms in the city as a back-up.

“We heard that the accommodation allocations are extremely tight,” said the former Olympic champion gymnast, who also sits on the JOC ‌Executive Board.