Tokyo 2020: The comeback kid Time to tie up your Asics trainers and reconnect the Nintendo Wii: Japan is back. That, at least, is what supporters of Tokyo's successful bid for the 2020 Olympics say it will show, as 1964 marked the country's peaceful return to the global stage. The tricky bit, when Asahi-induced celebratory hangovers wear off, is keeping that comeback on track regardless of the Olympics. The risk is that hosting the world's biggest sporting event proves a distraction for a country that has more than enough to be getting on with. Japan's energy supply is still strained following the nuclear shutdown after the 2011 Fukushima disaster - where the government is still fighting to contain leaks of contaminated water. And its nascent economic recovery is also delicate. If, as expected, second-quarter growth is this week revised up from its initial annualised 2.6 per cent reading, then a consumption tax rise next April, from 5 to 8 per cent, is more likely. If price hikes crush consumers" tentative revival as in 1997, then no amount of Olympic flag-waving will help. Tokyo does not plan to splash cash on these Games, either. The expected spend on infrastructure and facilities is equivalent to about 0.2 per cent of last year's gross domestic product, according to Nomura. This is no 1964, when huge projects, including the first bullet train, were equivalent to 3.6 per cent of GDP that year. At least the Olympics should not add too much to Japan's worryingly large debt pile. But these are early days: the UK initially thought London 2012 would cost less than £3bn but it came in at least three times that. Winning the games is not a fourth arrow in prime minister Shinzo Abe's quiver as has been suggested. Rather it gives a deadline for measuring the success of his other three arrows in reviving Japan. Meeting that would be a real achievement. But there is nothing sports fans like more than a good comeback story.