School children in the picturesque Japanese mountain city of Nagano are lucky -- thanks to the 1998 Winter Olympics, they have a lot of world-class sports venues to play in. There is the 110-million-dollar 'Spiral,' a mammoth ice track for the high-speed sliding sports of bobsleigh, luge and skeleton. The only one of its kind in Japan, it is now used by youngsters. Nagano also boasts the colossal 'M-Wave' skating arena, a 390-million-dollar structure that soars skyward 40 metres (130 feet) in the shape of a mountain, a stunning monument for a city of 380,000 people. In all, nine Olympics venues remain scattered in and around the city, also including a main stadium, now a baseball arena, and towering ski jumps. Their total price tag was more than 100 billion yen (1.1 billion dollars). Welcome back to Nagano, the apple-growing alpine prefecture which hosted the Winter Games 12 years ago, a 16-day extravaganza that it is still paying for as it tries to keep the sites from turning into white elephants. When the Olympics ended, the city's total debt stood at 2.2 billion dollars, or 18,000 dollars per family. Mayor Shoichi Washizawa, in office since 2001, told selfnews that debts the city incurred for the Games would not be repaid until 2015. He admitted it was a 'big burden' to maintain the former Olympic sites at a total running cost of about 13 million dollars a year. Today it still costs 2.2 million dollars a year alone to maintain the M-Wave, where local elementary school children take skating classes on a high-speed 400-metre rink in the winter. The venue has hosted world championships and other top competitions since the Olympics, as well as summertime pop concerts, trade fairs and dog shows. 'We spend a lot of money to keep the rink frozen 24 hours a day in the winter, and we get it back with the proceeds from summer events. We are breaking even,' said M-Wave official Ayako Ota. There is still considerable pride in this city for hosting a successful Games, and many residents are proud of Nagano's fame. 'It is very good that the Olympics turned the city of Nagano into a kind of brand,' said Kazuyuki Toyohara, who runs a noodle restaurant near the 1,400 -year-old Zenkoji Buddhist temple. But there are also the critics, who say the Games mainly benefited building companies and blighted the environment. A local think-tank estimates that about 16 billion dollars had been invested in Olympics-related projects in Nagano, including a high-speed train line and an expressway to Tokyo, 200 kilometres (125 miles) away. The better transport links have seen a decline in local hotel reservations as more people come for day trips, and caused an exodus of local shoppers to bigger cities. The details of other expenses have been lost in the mists of time -- or even in clouds of smoke. The Olympic organisers who wined, dined and entertained Olympic officials to bring the Games to Nagano have said the official records on how they spent 28 million dollars have been either lost or burned. 'Nagano has become famous worldwide, not because of the Olympics but because it burned the accounting books related to the Olympics,' said Masao Ezawa, an anti- Olympics activist. Despite the high price tag, the city fathers are still proud of the event that put Nagano on the world map. Amid Japan's current economic crunch, they even dream of of hosting the Games once more. 'The Nagano Olympics were worth it,' said the city's mayor. 'I think there is a considerable feeling in the minds of everyone that they might as well do it again.' Many Olympic facilities could be reused, he said, 'in this age of environmental consciousness.' 