TOKYO: Japanese corporate worker Mai Tarumi, who has been chosen as a torchbearer for the upcoming Paris Olympics, vigorously engages in volunteer activities and plays a role in the operations of events at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021.

As a torchbearer, Tarumi, 36, from the city of Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, is set to run in a Paris suburb Saturday, hoping to make more and more people interested in sports volunteer activities.

Volunteer activities have been familiar to Tarumi since childhood because her grandmother helped with the operations of national sports festivals and other events.

The grandmother told Tarumi, “Treat people with the spirit of ‘omotenashi’ (hospitality) if Olympic Games is held in Tokyo again.” With these words in mind, Tarumi helped operate wrestling and taekwondo events at the Makuhari Messe hall in the city of Chiba, east of Tokyo, in the 2021 Olympic Games. Before the 2021 Games, Tokyo hosted Olympics in 1964.

Tarumi adorned part of the venue with “orizuru” paper cranes to help visitors enjoy the events.

A total of more than 70,000 volunteers played their roles in the 2021 Tokyo Games, held amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

To keep up the momentum, Tarumi and her colleagues established an online group called Hello Volunteer in order to make sports volunteer activities widespread, such as by helping participants improve their skills needed for volunteer activities and sharing related know-how.

Hello Volunteer also developed relations with people abroad engaging in volunteer activities.

Shortly before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Tarumi was asked by a Chinese volunteer about anxiety about holding a major sporting event amid the novel coronavirus crisis.

Volunteers in the Tokyo Olympics also faced criticisms such as “it’s not time to hold the Olympics.”

Being able to understand the difficulties of continuing volunteer activities in the face of criticism, Tarumi contacted about 50 friends and sent the Chinese volunteer a message of encouragement.

Kentaro Sawada, 50, co-leader of Hello Volunteer, commends Tarumi, saying, “She can say the first words ‘Let’s do it.'”

With her efforts and passion highly evaluated, Tarumi was selected as one of the 10,000 torchbearers in the Paris Olympics, to be held between July 26 and Aug. 11.

She is set to run about 200 meters in Melun, southeast of Paris, on Saturday.

Tarumi also plans to work as a volunteer at the Paris Games.

With Japan scheduled to host the Deaflympics in 2025 and the Asian Games in 2026, Tarumi says: “Omotenashi will continue to be needed going forward. I want to tell people ‘you can do it.'”

JIJI Press