While North Korea will not be missed, it is admittedly disappointing. An important Olympic value is world peace through sports, and many naturally prefer rival countries vie in games rather in war.

That hope is realized typically every four years when we see competing nations such as the United States and Russia and now China participating in the Olympics. The games may even be beneficial to countries with internal conflict such as Myanmar. Hopefully, its representatives in Tokyo will bring home some inspiration for peace and democracy from their experience.

For Filipinos, we hope our athletes bring home medals, preferably gold. As the retired basketball star Robert Jaworski once told us long ago, Filipinos bring home balikbayan boxes instead of Olympic medals. Perhaps our continued participation will bring about the reforms in sports that we need.

For the host country Japan, it would be no small feat just to keep people safe and healthy. Some 65 percent of the Japanese wanted the games canceled or postponed again, according to a recent poll there. And at least 300,000 Japanese signed a petition to scrap the event.

The final decision, though, was unsurprising for that hardy nation. Remember that Japan was still reeling from a devastating earthquake and the Fukushima disaster just two years before bidding to host the games.

Rightly or wrongly, the Olympics is now open. It seems petty to wait for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, just so we can tell Japan, we told you so. Instead, we should wish Japan and all the athletes good luck. Even if problems emerge later on in the games, we should treat those as opportunities to learn for future international events.

If Japan pulls off a successful Olympics, history may remember the Tokyo games as a triumph of the human spirit over adversity.