Behind the scenes at these Olympics - my housing and food

I have had a huge amount requests to share the behind the scenes of these Olympics, so I am going to try and tackle some of that in this blog post.

Today I will cover my housing and food here at the Olympics.

My Housing

My Olympics started about a week ago when I finally made in through the airport process and onto a press bus. We were taken to a transportation hub where each of us was put into a taxi and taken to our hotels. I am not a high-maintenance traveler, but I have to admit that I was shocked when I got to my hotel. The room was not nearly as nice as what the website showed. And as expected, it is REALLY small.

This was my room a couple of days ago, and yes, this is pretty much the whole room. It is a good thing that this place is mainly used for sleeping purposes only. It is tight quarters, but at least the bed is comfortable and the room is quiet. When taking this photo, I was standing in the small hallway over my two camera bags (which I tripped over more times than I can count).

I was shocked to see that the bathroom is raised from the room, but come to find out that this is quite common in Japan. The shower head is over a small tub, which is great for doing laundry.

When I showed my friends my room, they said, "Do you at least have a closet?" and the answer is "well...kinda". This my friends is my "closet". It is about 8 inches deep and not very useful. I was tripping over everything in the room until I realized that I had things in there that I just did not need, so...

I asked the hotel employee if we could remove some of the unused furniture out of the room. He came to the fourth floor with me and we moved all the unused stuff out to the hallway. That was about 4 days ago and it is still there. I suspect it will stay like this until I check out and leave in a couple of weeks. Too funny.

Now I have a little more breathing room and am not tripping on things (as much).

This is my messy desk, with my awesome 16" MacBook Pro and lots of Crucial 2TB SSDs which I back up to very night.

The Food

Earlier in the week, I blogged about my fish (and only fish) breakfast. The good news is that after some further communication about my allergies, I am getting served a breakfast other than fish. It is not a western breakfast, but it works. Each morning I bring down my breakfast voucher and see what shows up in front of me.

So far I have had chicken with miso soup, rice and an egg...

...or half a hamburger with the same side dishes. I don't mind having this for breakfast, but I have to say that it is weird having chicken, rice and miso soup with OJ and coffee.

The funny thing is...yesterday when I was waiting for our press bus out in front of the hotel, I noticed all the other food served at the same restaurant.

And there were more than one choices of omelettes! So I took this photo and asked the people at the restaurant if they could serve this to us (and there are a lot of us who want eggs for breakfast). They told me that they only serve omelettes for lunch. That made me laugh. But...they did say that they will ask the chef to see if this could happen in the future. Stay tuned.

For lunch, we have to stick to eating on the Olympics premises. We are still not allowed to go outside the Olympic bubble since we have not passed our 14 days here yet. 

When I blogged about the Main Press Center last week, I mentioned that there was a pizza and hamburger place downstairs. We have basically lived this this restaurant, and even know the cashiers by name.

Not the healthiest thing in the world, but it works!

And then there is the food at the venues, and that leaves some room for improvement. Normally they have some hot options, but so far I have not seen that anywhere. It is just pre-made sandwiches and stuff like that. 

At the water polo media room, they have these peanut butter sandwiches and jelly sandwiches available for free. Arnold, the photo manager, showed me the trick of smashing these together to make a pretty darned good PB and J sandwich.

Here is the killer combination! And there are always free water bottles for us, which is handy to keep us hydrated.

At some point, I may be able to go out to a restaurant near my hotel, but I need to wait for my 14 day quarantine to end. 

__________________________________________________________________________

Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

__________________________________________________________________________