The welcome extended to Japan’s Olympic athletes at the London Games seems not to have lasted too long. In what appears to be an organizational blunder, Japan’s athletes were shown the exit door, just minutes after appearing at the opening ceremony.

The early exit has miffed fans back home all the same, sparking a slew of posts on microblogging sites and even prompting comments by politicians. Some of them wondered how it was possible that Japan’s athletes could be denied their chance to revel in an unforgettable night of Olympic pageantry.

A Japan Olympic Committee spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that the entire delegation was mistakenly led out of the stadium. Athletes have the option to leave after the parade of nations if they don’t want the late-night festivities to tire them out and about 30 of the Japanese contingent had requested to go home early. But amid some confusion, all 44 followed their guide out the door.

Once out, they weren’t allowed back in.

The vexed and delayed reaction came after a Japanese blogger who attended the ceremony posted an entry on Tuesday about his experience. The visitor wondered why the entire Japanese delegation was led out of the stadium after barely rounding the track, while the competitors of other countries were trotted towards an area where they could enjoy the show. Accompanying pictures showed the Japanese athletes being guided toward a one-way exit.

The early departure didn’t smell right to Japanese Olympic fans on Twitter. Many cried foul play by the London organizers. The Japanese word for “failure” trended throughout most of the afternoon and soon became the root of conversation threads on online message boards. Tweets were huffy and expressed disappointment on behalf of the athletes who were denied the chance to sing-a-long to “Hey Jude.”

Then Tokyo Vice Governor Naoki Inose entered the fray, saying he’d “l(fā)ike to confirm” what happened. On Wednesday, Kouta Matsuda, a member of parliament, dedicated a blog entry of his own to the matter after he called Japan’s sports ministry to get to the bottom of the confusion.

To be sure, many athletes don’t choose to attend the opening ceremonies at all because they want to focus on competing.

In fact, only 15% of the 293 athletes representing Japan attended the ceremony on Friday. While the JOC has pointed out the incident to the London Organizing Committee, the spokesman said the JOC doesn’t intend to lodge a complaint.

So what about the slighted athletes themselves? They appear to be more concerned with winning medals than watching fireworks. The spokesman said none of them has complained.

【新聞快訊】

從奧運會開幕式至今，已經(jīng)有越來越多的人對倫敦舉辦奧運會的能力提出了質(zhì)疑。這兩天，日本代表團在奧運開幕式上被直接引導出了體育場的消息獲得證實，日本網(wǎng)民一片嘩然。

倫敦開幕式各國代表團入場式上，按照慣例各國代表團繞場一周后會被引導到場地中央。但是當天，日本代表團亮相繞場后，卻被引導員從旁邊的出口直接引導出了體育場現(xiàn)場。等到后來各國運動員都已經(jīng)站在場地中央集合時，日本代表已經(jīng)不見了！

此事經(jīng)日本網(wǎng)友寫博客爆料后，在網(wǎng)上掀起軒然大波。事后，日本媒體也是致電了日本奧委會詢問緣由，對此日本奧委會回復說：“中途退場事件是確實發(fā)生的事情，雖然事前代表團提出中途中途退場是有可能的，但是我們?nèi)毡敬韴F沒有提出過申請。這是奧組委的失誤，導致了日本奧運代表團的中途退場。其次，除了日本以外，其他國家也遇到引導錯誤，而且被引導中途退場的事情也有過發(fā)生。最后，日本代表團表示不會特別看重這個問題，因為這對競技比賽不會產(chǎn)生任何影響。 ”

當大家矛頭開始指向倫敦奧組委時，美聯(lián)社記者斯蒂夫·威廉森則更新Twitter解釋此事卻說：“奧委會主席主席羅格證實，日本代表團開幕式亮相后選擇離開是他們自己的選擇?！?/p>