A Week at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo 2025

I had no official role in Tokyo. No badge, no media pass, no team to tend to. I went with a group of friends, bought tickets like everyone else, and spent a week doing exactly what I wanted: watching world-class athletics (for the first time), running through unfamiliar streets, and eating far too well.

This was my second time in Japan. I visited in 2024 and liked it so much that the World Championships felt like the perfect excuse to come back. It did not disappoint.

The stadium

The Japan National Stadium is something else. Built for the 2020 Olympics, it has a layered wooden roof that frames the sky like an enormous eye and lots of greenery on the outside.

We went big in Japan and attended four competition night sessions. The men's 100 metres from right beside the finish line. Both pole vault finals from right behind the mattress. And, when buying the tickets, the men's 3000 metre steeplechase — where Finland's Topi Raitanen would have been entered. Raitanen, unfortunately, was injured and did not compete. A disappointment, but that is elite sport.

Where is Waldo?

The pole vault, though, delivered beyond anything I could have imagined. Armand Duplantis had dropped twice from 6.30 and went for the third attempt. Before he even started his run to the vault, the entire audience stood up. There was a collective realisation — before the dash — that he was going to do it. And he did. The noise was extraordinary. Seconds later, he ran to the stands and hugged someone close to him in the crowd. I have a photo from roughly fifteen metres away that captures the moment.

Between sessions

The days in Tokyo followed a pleasant rhythm. Mornings were for exploring and afternoons for resting before the long nights. One afternoon, between the morning session and the evening trip to the stadium, I went for a jog along the Meguro river. Tokyo is a spectacular city to run in: quiet residential streets open suddenly onto railway crossings, convenience stores appear every two hundred metres, and everything is spotlessly clean.

The heat, though, was relentless. As someone who spends professional time thinking about how temperature affects airways and athletic performance, I noticed things I might otherwise have ignored. Misting fans stationed around the stadium precinct. Athletes warming up in ice vests. The sheer volume of water bottles drained trackside after every session after athletes taking a sip before the race.

Tokyo in September is not a kind environment for endurance events, and the organisers clearly knew it.

The pub

Two nights that week, we ended up at Abbot's Choice in Shibuya — a pub with big screens showing replays of the day's events. There is something funny about watching a replay of the 5000 metres on Japanese television, where the graphics are overflowing with kanji and the commentary is completely unintelligible, while drinking a cold beer after a long day in the stadium. I recommend it.

The food

I have to mention the food because it was honestly a highlight on par with the athletics. Two places in particular:

Tenkazushi Shibuya Dogenzaka — a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where the plates come to you on a little belt and everything is fresh and absurdly cheap. Perfect for a quick meal between sessions.

Gyukatsu Motomura Shibuya — this is the one. Beef tonkatsu, not pork. You get a hot stone alongside your plate and sear the slices yourself to your preferred doneness. The sauce — I still think about that sauce. If you go to Tokyo and eat one meal, make it this one.

Hakone

We also made a day trip to Hakone for the onsens. I have been to two: Hakone Yuryo and Tenzan Onsen. Both are proper outdoor hot spring baths surrounded by forest. If I had to choose one, Hakone Yuryo is the better experience — quieter, more traditional, and the water feels like it has opinions about your well-being. It also has a proper sauna with a "sauna performance" and, inexplicably, an advertising TV inside.

After a week of stadium heat and city walking, soaking in a mountain hot spring felt like exactly the right way to decompress.

What I took home

No souvenirs, really. Just the memory of Duplantis floating over a bar that no human should be able to clear, the sound of a stadium holding its breath, and a persistent craving for that beef tonkatsu with the sauce.