No.90 Toward the Rugby World Cup

Due to the mayoral election, the mayor column in the May 15, 2019 issue was suspended, but with the confidence of the citizens, I have been entrusted with a third term. We will continue to work on the small section, so thank you for your understanding.
In the eight years since I took office as mayor, I have been working hard to develop Inagi City, working closely with the Tokyo Mayors Association and the National Association of Mayors, and supporting areas affected by large-scale disasters. At the National Association of Mayors, I will continue to serve as the chairman of the Special Committee on Waste Disposal Measures and the vice-chairman of the Special Committee on Disaster Prevention Measures, so I will continue to promote Inagi City throughout the country, focusing on the environment and disaster prevention. I'm coming.
This year, the Rugby World Cup will finally be held in Japan. Although this will be the first time the tournament will be held in Asia, Japan has participated nine times in a row since the first tournament in 1987.
It's great that a world-class tournament is being held in a familiar place, and as Inagi City, which advocates "one sport for each citizen," we have been thinking that it would be great if this event could lead to the promotion of sports. .
However, because there were no accommodation facilities or practice areas in the city, it was not possible to invite participating countries to hold preparatory camps. I've been wondering if we could at least hold some sort of rugby-related event.
By the way, many of you may not know this, but Nihon University's vast physical education facilities are located in the city. It is located on a hill in the Sakahama Hirao district, adjacent to Metropolitan Wakaba Sogo High School and Inagi Daini Junior High School. The site is approximately 126,000 square meters, the size of 2.7 Tokyo Domes, and is an athlete training facility called ``Sports Nihon University Athletic Park Inagi,'' which has two artificial turf grounds for rugby and soccer, running courses including cross country, and student dormitories. .
Inagi City has been exploring collaboration with Nihon University through its rugby club for several years. The city will cooperate with the development of these sports facilities, and Nihon University will cooperate with the development of the area around the facilities, with an eye toward having students participate in local volunteer activities and, in the future, sending students to elementary and junior high schools. Discussions are continuing.
This time, based on the idea of ​​the Nihon University Rugby Club, a children's rugby experience event was held on May 4, 2019 in the morning, and in the afternoon, the official game of the 8th Kanto University Spring Tournament (Nihon University vs. Hosei University) was held. It's done. A tent was also set up to introduce the World Cup.
As far as we know, there are no children's rugby teams in the city, so we were worried about how many children would participate in the morning event, but when we opened the lid, over 100 children were participating. He gave it to me. We can see that interest in rugby is high in the run-up to the World Cup.
The children received instruction from members of the Nihon University Rugby Club, played a tag rugby practice match at the end, and watched an official match in the afternoon, cheering on both teams with great energy. I was impressed by how quickly children can adapt to new environments.
In the future, the city will consider further initiatives such as incorporating dishes from World Cup participating countries into school lunch menus and collaborating with the Nihon University Rugby Club. Let's all enjoy the Rugby World Cup!