Originally published at: Japan mayor shamed for shoving an Olympic gold medal in his mouth, now apologizing | Boing Boing
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Takashi Kawamura is mayor of Nagoya, the fourth largest incorporated city in Japan. This is not his first controversial incident.
Or his second.
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A Japanese arse. The Japanese are usually more courteous in public, so arses like this do seem to stick out, perhaps on account of Japan appearing to have fewer arses than other countries. (??)
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when I was in jr. high in the Detroit area, we had career day and instead of our regular schedule, we received a new one where a different visiting adult would talk about their work and give us motivational speeches.
I landed in what was usually my math class’s room where Steve Fraser was speaking. a native of the area, he explained how a dumb jock like him got a scholarship to the “public ivy” University of Michigan for wrestling, where he not only was a collegiate champ, but through a lot of hard work, he managed to pass all his classes and matriculate; and we could, too, if we just buckled down and applied ourselves.
then he talked about how he made the Olympic team and became the first american to win gold in Greco-Roman wrestling and then he handed his GOLD MEDAL out to the nearest kid and told him to pass it around the WHOLE CLASS!
when it came to me, I was stunned and time stood still, the teacher whose room it was had to snap me out of it to pass it to the next kid. it was fairly big and really heavy for its size. of course, I had had zero experience with any kind of gold prior, had no idea about it’s density and the periodic chart etc.
Fraser joked that on a special day, he was going to unwrap the foil and eat the chocolate inside.
and yet, even after he said that, a whole classroom full of eleven-year-olds respectfully handled a gold medal and refrained from hitting on that hunk of man nor did any of us put the medal anywhere near our mouths.
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OK, wait, this gesture didn’t come out of nowhere, though. Isn’t that what they all do, bite the medals?
I dont understand why he’s getting such an extreme amount of heat for this:
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It’s not his medal. He doesn’t get to do that with other people’s medals.
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Many athletes will pretend to bite their gold medal as a goof, as though checking to see if it is genuine, much as people did in the early days of solid gold coins. Solid gold is relatively soft and will deform slightly when bitten. Fakes tend to be much harder, but it’s hardly a reliable test. In modern days, gold medals are not solid gold anyway. My understanding is they are gold plated silver. Pretending to bite is one thing, though pointless. Biting hard enough to deform the base metal would be plain stupid. One would have to bite really hard to deform the silver base metal.
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That’s definitely on-brand for the scumbags at the IOC.
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It’s kind of like kissing a spouse in public. Usually fine if it’s your own, generally frowned upon if you do it to someone else’s without warning or permission.
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What! There’s no chocolate inside?
Too bad he didn’t chip a tooth.
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It has been suggested that most of them probably don’t want to bite them at all and are just pressed into doing so now.
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I suspect that historically the distance and language barrier has provided a pretty effective curtain to hide arses behind.
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Olympic medals haven’t been solid gold since 1912. In fact, only 3 Olympics ever awarded solid gold medals- winners in 1896 got silver medals. In 1900, the winners’ medals were supposed to be gilt silver, but shortages of materials meant most winners got cups or other trophies instead.
The 1904, 1908 and 1912 medals were solid gold but were much smaller than today’s medals- the 1912 medals were 33 mm in diameter and 1.5 mm thick, compared to 85 mm diameter and 7-12 mm thick for the medals awarded in Tokyo.
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“I would cry if that happened to me,” Naohisa Takato, who won gold for Japan in judo, said in a tweet. “I handle my own gold medal so gently not to scratch it.”
British diver Tom Daley has gone one better and knitted a cozy for his medal to stop it being scratched:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CR0ciqMIOIJ/
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Considering how many athletes shove their medal into their mouth like a toddler when they get it, that part doesn’t bother me.
Stupidest looking act from a normal adult I know of.
On a par with “vaping” to make one look like a dork,
He seems nice.
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I know, first they cancel the 1916 games because of the “war”, and then they have the gall to blame that same war for “shortages” of gold. Get your story straight!
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