This week, Tokyo was chosen to host the Summer Olympics of 2020. For most people, this would a be a fact of little consequence. There’s no need to start thinking that far into the future, especially since there are still three years until the Games in Rio de Janeiro. But was Tokyo really the right choice? I could list the outstanding qualities of the city that led to the Olympic Committee’s decision, such as excellent transportation and infrastructure, but in my opinion, Tokyo should not have even placed itself in the running.

It’s been two years since the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit the northern Tohoku region of Japan, and the radiation crisis that followed. However, today, the affected regions’ recovery continues with sluggish development. In the majority of coastal towns, cleanup has taken over a year to complete, and was comprised only of clearing away the rubble and piling everything else into mountains of dirt and trash. Rebuilding, even in towns far from the radiation zone, has yet to start full-scale. And, most importantly, the damaged nuclear reactors in the Fukushima prefecture of Tohoku have yet to be fully repaired. Recent news about the condition of the reactors’ reparations states that water used to treat the broken reactors has been leaking out of the storage tanks. A report from the New York Times revealed that 300 tons of radioactive water have seeped into the ground and ocean. A spokesman from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the tanks, said that they are not even built to last more than five years or withstand future earthquakes or tsunamis, an issue that certainly deserves more attention and funding. And newly-justified fears over contaminated produce are compelling Japanese citizens to avoid buying food products from the Tohoku region, which could be damaging to its delicate, post-earthquake economy.

Today News reported that the disaster in Tohoku will probably cost up to $309 billion to fix. On top of that, Japan is still in the midst of its recovery from the recent worldwide economic depression. While the state of the Japanese economy is finally on the rise, Japan’s national debt is still twice its GDP, according to Business Insider magazine. It’s no secret that the Olympics are expensive, with total costs reaching into the billions. However, Japan cannot afford to spend that kind of money when there are more pressing domestic issues at hand. How can the Japanese government divert its attention and support from such an important matter, especially when that matter involves the welfare of its own people? No amount of national honor or glory is worth that much.