After Oyamazaki Town (Kyoto Prefecture) and Fukushima City in June and December 2016, the Secretariat of the Headquarters for the Promotion of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games announced on April 27 that Oita City would also officially team up with Switzerland for the 2020 Host Town Initiative, which was designed to promote educational and sports exchanges between the population, foreign countries and visiting Olympic teams before and during the 2020 Games.
Shortly after the announcement, on May 19, Ambassador Jean-François Paroz and Minister Peter Nelson met with Oita Prefecture Governor Katsusada Hirose, Oita City Mayor Kiichiro Sato, and their representatives, to whom they expressed their warmest congratulations for having chosen to become Switzerland’s Host Town on the road to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Both sides then discussed the planning of various showcases, lectures and workshops in the city before and during the Games, providing Swiss visitors and local residents with the opportunity to create and cultivate friendship ties that will outlast 2020.
The Swiss representatives notably met with Mr. Harada, Manager of the Social Welfare Division for the Disabled in Oita City, to whom they expressed their eagerness to support the visits and exchanges of Swiss Paralympic athletes and supporters with their counterparts from Oita City. Indeed, the city has hosted the world-renowned Oita International Wheelchair Marathon on a yearly basis since 1981, and Swiss athletes such as Olympic medallists Heinz Frei or Marcel Hug won first place in 20 of the 37 editions of the competition.
In the presence of the Honourable Seishiro Eto, Vice-Speaker for the Japanese House of Representatives, President of Japan-Switzerland Parliamentarians’ Friendship League and an Oita native, the new partners and friends concluded the visit by raising their glasses to a promising future.
In addition, Ambassador Paroz and Minister Nelson also took the time to attend the opening of the E.G. Bürhle art exhibition in Fukuoka − where they met Mr. Gratian Anda and Director and Curator Lukas Gloor of the E.G. Bührle Foundation, to stop by the Dazaifu Tenman-gu Shrine, and to visit the plant of Swiss chemicals company EMS located in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
