On Wednesday white smoke billowed from a chimney above the Sistine Chapel, alerting the world to the Vatican’s choice of its new leader. French cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran emerged to utter the traditional Latin words: “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam” (“I announce to you a great joy. We have a pope.”)

For the first time in 1,300 years, since Syrian-born Pope Gregory III, a non-European has been chosen to represent the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. Taking the papal name of Francis, the Argentine pope is also the first Jesuit and first Latin American ever to be selected for the role. Predictions leading up to the conclave’s decision had placed Angelo Scola or Milan and Peter Turkson of Ghana at the head of the pack.

While this may disappoint fans of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 55, of the Philippines, it is still an interesting choice from an Asia-Pacific perspective. The church’s geographical base is increasingly found beyond Europe. Latin America has the largest Catholic population, comprising some 480 million members. The Philippines is the largest Christian nation in Asia and the third-largest Catholic nation in the world.

“The election of a pope from the ‘new world’ is an occasion of genuinely historic proportions,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said. “Today is an exciting day for Australian Catholics and perhaps especially for Australians of Argentinian descent. My thoughts are with them all.”

When Pope Francis first appeared on the balcony before a crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square, he broke with tradition off the bat. Rather than blessing the crowd that numbered in the tens of thousands, he said, “Let us say this prayer, your prayer for me, in silence.” This simple gesture, pundits suggest, has many wondering if greater changes may be on the way.

As he addressed the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis added: “As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a Bishop of Rome. It seems to me that my brother cardinals have chosen one who is from faraway. ... Here I am. I would like to thank you for your embrace.”

At 76, Pope Francis has his work cut out for him. These are turbulent times for the 2,000-year old Catholic Church, beset by a child sex abuse scandal, bureaucratic infighting and struggling to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. These factors, commentators suggest, are precisely why he was chosen.

The issues that concern members of the Latin American Catholic Church are many, with social justice and poverty ranking near the top. Indeed, he chose his papal name after St. Francis of Assisi, who was known as a champion of the poor. This is the first time a pope has taken the name of Francis – yet another deviation from tradition.

Born into a middle-class family of seven, Bergoglio’s father was an Italian immigrant railway worker and his mother was a housewife. Prior to his Vatican move, he lived a simple life, getting around Buenos Aires via public transport and living in a small apartment outside the city. His humble upbringing and unadorned lifestyle have allowed him to remain aware of the plight of the poor in his home region and beyond.

“As a champion of the poor and the most vulnerable among us, he carries forth the message of love and compassion that has inspired the world for more than 2,000 years -- that in each other, we see the face of God,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement.

While fans of Tagle may be a bit let down, many are betting that the Philippines or Brazil could be the first place that Pope Francis visits. If this is his first destination of choice seems that a shift may really be underway.

When it comes to beverages of choice, Asia conjures images of tea for most, from the bitter powdery green tea (matcha) of Japan’s tea ceremony and China’s soothing oolong to India’s sweet-spicy masala chai. Through a twist of historical fate, however, Vietnam bucks this trend and has developed one of the most thriving coffee scenes in the world.

Thanks to French colonial influences, the Vietnamese have developed a knack for mixing and brewing a unique style of coffee. They have also perfected the experience of quaffing the brew, elevating it to something of an art.

In Vietnam coffee “is meant to be savored, not carried in a cup-holder to work,” Len Brault, CEO of U.S.-based Southeast Asian coffee importer Heirloom Coffee, told The Diplomat. “It’s a gourmet and relaxing experience to brew the coffee one cup at a time at your table. That’s why it is unique in the world. It isn’t just the coffee. It’s what it means to people in their lives.”

Brault described Vietnamese coffee as being low in acid and “very smooth, even when it is brewed strong or has a sharp flavor.” For Brault the secrets of the brew include the practice of blending three signature species of coffee, the nation’s basaltic (old volcanic mountain) soil, the methods used to dry the beans, the practice of roasting them and finally, the special brewing method itself.

Coffee was introduced in Vietnam around 1857 and it quickly became a mainstay for the nation’s economy, with plantations sprouting up across the country. Several varieties of coffee – Arabica, Robusta, Excelsa and more – are cultivated in a wide range of microclimates found throughout Vietnam’s lush landscape.

For Vietnamese, coffee was imbued with a sense of social decorum from the start, with different classes imbibing the drink of choice in different ways. Chairman Dang Le Nguyen Vu of Vietnamese coffee giant Trung Nguyen told The Diplomat that “common laborers drank coffee as a beverage (a weakly brewed coffee in a large glass) while the creative classes and intellectuals enjoy slow dripping their coffee through a Vietnamese phin (filter).”

For Dang, the slow act of dripping coffee through the phin can become a form of non-religious meditation. While the drip process is underway, “a sufficient interval of time passes, helping the drinker slow down and let go of the worries of the day.”

While the act of drinking may be a way to unwind, on the business side Vietnam’s connoisseurship does not allow for much rest. Last year Vietnam became the world’s largest producer of the coveted bean, surpassing Brazil.

This is no small feat. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world after oil, making it more in demand than natural gas – an amazing thing to consider. And export volumes continue to grow, with a spike of 8 percent in global output predicted for the 2012/2013 marketing year. That’s 146 million bags.

Despite a drop in production of a bit less than 5 percent during the 2012/2013 harvest in Daklak – the nation’s main coffee producing region – Vietnamese soil in Daklak province alone still managed to yield 465,000 tons (7.75 million bags) of beans.

Nationwide, Vietnam exports roughly 1 million tons of beans every year and earned U.S. $3.4 billion on coffee exports in 2012, a yearly increase of 36 percent. The Vietnamese government has unveiled a blueprint for maximizing coffee production until 2020, with the aim of growing the treasured bean on 500,000 hectares of land (with a yield of 2.4 tons per hectare).

From March 9 to March 12, the 4th Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Festival was thrown in Vietnam’s coffee “capital” city of Buon Ma Thuot, in the country’s Central Highlands. The festivities were rolled in by performances featuring 150 ethnic gong artists, while a street parade with elephants, dances and puppet performances and even a Coffee Queen competition were all on show.

But the real point, of course, was the coffee. In total, 183 domestic companies and 38 from overseas clamored for visitors’ attention at 700 booths. More specifically, the goal is to put Vietnamese coffee more centrally on the map overseas – specifically in the U.S., the world’s largest coffee market.

If any firm from Vietnam is poised to make that breakthrough, it is Trung Nguyen, which was a co-organizer of the event in Buon Ma Thuot. Already the biggest coffee retailer at home, the company’s real dream is to take its product global. “Everyone knows the U.S. is the top country for coffee consumption. It (the U.S.) does not need new coffee,” Dang said. “It needs a new story; one that embodies history, culture and legacy.”

According to Brault, the main obstacle to this potential gold mine is marketing. He explained that companies in Vietnam have still not found the right way to present their “amazing product… About seven out of ten people we test the products with would either replace their favorite coffees or add Trung Nguyen to what they drink,” he said. “The dollar value of that proposition is in the billions.”

In The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a group of Western backpackers attempt to carve out a deserted, hideaway from the modern world – a utopia that ultimately unravels – on a faraway island off the coast of Thailand.

While this is the image many may hold of Asia – backpackers’ circuits, hostels, pilgrimage – numbers just released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) suggest that this dream is not likely to materialize.

In 2012, the Asia-Pacific region lured more international arrivals to its shores than ever before, with some estimates clocking as many as 350 million international arrivals, up 5 percent and 18 million additional visits from the year prior. Visitor numbers to the Asia-Pacific region have steadily risen for three straight years now.

Of the 40 nations included in this region, only five suffered losses, including – perhaps surprisingly – China’s 2.5 percent contraction (representing roughly 3 million arrivals). It should be noted that this “loss” is actually only a loss in terms of compatriot arrivals. Foreign arrivals also climbed for China, rising 1.6 percent.

Southeast Asia came out on top in terms of growth with gains of 9.9 percent over 2011 (an additional 8 million arrivals). ASEAN nations’ aggregated total of international inbound visitors hit a whopping 89 million, with growth numbers among tourists visiting from China exploding in Indonesia and expectations that they could come in droves to Thailand in 2013 (thanks in part to the wacky Mainland comedy Lost in Thailand), to name but a few examples. Indeed, China, which now supplies as many visitors to ASEAN countries as Europe, is a key target market for the whole of ASEAN. The same China-centric marketing push goes for Australia as well.

But perhaps the most notable gains can be seen in the massive rises in Myanmar (52 percent), Cambodia (24 percent) and Laos (22 percent). In 2012, international arrivals in Myanmar broke the 1 million mark, while the same numbers in Cambodia and Laos exceeded 3 million visitors over the same period.

Meanwhile, South Asian numbers cooled a bit (6.6 percent growth for the region) after years of double-digit growth, the Pacific region (from the Northern Marianas and Vanuatu to Hawaii, Australia and Guam) saw an overall rise of 6 percent, and Northeast Asia managed to generate an overall growth rate of 4 percent.

Ultimately, in terms of sheer volume, the big gainers were Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – each with more than 1 million additional arrivals to its shores from the previous year.

In the case of Japan, in particular, it is worth mentioning that the nation has bounced back from the disastrous dip suffered in its tourism industry after the earthquake that ravaged Honshu’s northeastern coast two years ago yesterday. In 2012, with international arrivals surging 35 percent from the year before – a clearly hopeful sign that the nation is slowly but surely bouncing back from the triple-disaster two years ago.

“Asia and the Pacific continues to add substantially to the global international arrivals count. We expect that to continue for some time yet,” PATA’s CEO Martin J. Craigs said in a statement released by the organization. “The players shift and change of course and we can expect some movement in terms of generating and receiving markets. But across the region we expect substantial gains in both the volume and the value of these movements for some time yet.”

On April 23, 2011, several thousand Vegalta Sendai football club fans decked out in the team’s blue and golden yellow colors made the 500 mile round trip to Todoroki Athletics Stadium in Kawasaki city, where Vegalta faced off with J. League Division 1 rival Kawasaki Frontale.

As the game warmed up, Vegalta’s famed Supporter Squad – a volunteer choir of some 4,000 fans – hyped the crowd with their normal set list of songs by Kiss, The Ramones and Twisted Sister, and most importantly their trademark rendition of John Denver’s classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

But this was not just any game. It was the first game after the J. League resumed play following the catastrophic 9.0 magnitude earthquake that left parts of Tohoku in ruins on March 11 that year.

“I cannot imagine how I will feel at the start of tomorrow’s game,” the Japan Football Association reported Vegalta’s manager Makoto Teguramori as saying before the game in Kawasaki. “If we play tough, we can encourage the people in Sendai and the Tohoku District and give them hope. We want to be a power for those who have lost hope.”

The recent devastation fresh on everyone’s mind infused the game with added urgency and emotional charge. In response, Frontale’s fans joined Vegalta’s cheering section in belting out the songs before the competition began. When the players stepped onto the pitch that day, Vegalta fans unfurled a giant banner that read: “Thank you for all our friends, we do not lose again until we regain a hometown.”

They did not disappoint. Representing more than just the city’s football team, the players and cheering section forged a symbiotic relationship with the city they call home and made a vow not to lose until Sendai was rebuilt. Starting in Kawasaki that day, VegaltGa pulled ahead with a late goal to win 2-1, the first in an 11-game winning streak. After nearly being dropped from the league the year prior, they finished the season fourth – their best ever result.

Vegalta’s dramatic rally in the 2011 season mirrored the rebuilding of Sendai – a journey that is traced through the point of view of the Supporters Squad in the documentary film Football, Take Me Home, co-directed by filmmakers Douglas Hurcombe and Geoff Trodd, who recently launched GPO Films, a company “with a deliberately intimate approach to filmmaking.”

Hurcombe and Trodd made it a point to shoot all of the film’s footage with handheld cameras to keep the feel of the movie as authentic and personal as possible. The film is being courted by festivals in England and Japan and the directors plan to donate some of its proceeds to help redevelop Tohoku.

Reflecting on his time creating the film, Hurcombe told The Diplomat, “The atmosphere inside the stadium is so incredible. Having been to grounds all over Europe and parts of South America, it certainly ranks alongside anything I’ve seen.”

Hurcombe, whose wife is Japanese, added, “I grew up in the cauldron of the hotly contested local derbies of North London between Spurs and Arsenal in the 1980s and the mood at the Niigata game (included in the film) was bordering on that for intensity. Keeping my eyes off the pitch and through the camera was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in a football ground.”

Sendai was at the geographical center of the 9.0 magnitude mega-quake that devastated a large swathe of the Tohoku region two years ago today, which resulted in more than 15,000 deaths. In the Sendai area, the waves generated by this undersea megathrust quake pummeled everything in their path as far as 10 km (6 miles) inland.

Indeed, the shadow of the earthquake hung heavily over the team’s season. “Some of the people we interviewed (for the film) said that, among their regular match day friends, they literally didn’t know who was alive or dead until they got to the (Kawasaki) game. And sadly many hadn’t made it,” Hurcombe said.

Yet, like a Phoenix, Sendai’s stadium was remarkably rebuilt in just six weeks and its port reopened April 26. Vegalta’s team played a major role in this recovery and, notes Hurcombe, the club “became a symbol of the recovery and pretty much an inspiration to the whole country.”

Off the pitch, when the earthquake struck, Vegalta players immediately volunteered to help distribute emergency supplies. Further, the players have been continuously engaged with organizing soccer schools for children orphaned and those left homeless by the earthquake.

The team has also acted as a supplier for the areas hardest hit by the quake, especially in the devastated agricultural and fishing communities that were once the lifeblood of the region, both rejuvenating the economy and countering suspicions that surround the safety of food sourced from the area.

“These small towns are now the food suppliers and vendors for the club, which to me is incredible,” Hurcombe said. “Can you imagine a premier league club saying ‘No’ to a large franchise chain in order to sell fresh local produce?”

Today, redevelopment of Sendai and rebuilding of the wider Tohoku region is still a work in progress. Particularly in the coastal regions the return to normalcy has been harder to come by than in Sendai, which is largely back to business as usual. Now that two years have passed since that fateful day, Japan has not forgotten. Yet, the horror of the event has gradually receded into memory.

“To be honest, everyone has already started to forget about the tragedy on a daily basis,” Kaoru Kumeda, Hurcombe’s wife and co-producer of the film, told The Diplomat. “Even when we would like to think that we are keeping it in mind, we often do not – unless we are in the middle of it. For example, the temporary shopping mall in Tohoku is struggling to get sales these days as not many volunteers or tourists visit there.”

Kumeda continued, “A lot of people told me after the tragedy that they just feel they should do what they must to return to normality and move forward. Everyone was trying to live their normal lives.”

This desire to return to stability is completely understandable for those who have suffered such loss, and indeed, is very much associated with Japan’s national character – this ability to pick up the pieces and rebuild from nothing. They did it after WWII and they did it after 3/11. But this does not mean that it is accomplished effortlessly. Ultimately, a desire to balance this tendency to downplay Japan’s admirable achievement in bouncing back is at the heart of the motivation behind this film.

“You get the feeling that because it’s Japan people kind of say ‘Well, of course they’ve recovered, because it’s Japan... It’s what they do,’” Hurcombe said. “This is selling a whole lot of human suffering and effort very short.”

He continued: “I’d like this film to connect people to that effort through a medium that everyone understands: Sport.... Just because it’s being done quietly and without fuss, doesn’t mean that it’s painless.”

In an interesting twist for Taiwanese baseball fans, Manny Ramirez arrives today to play in the local league.

The 40-year-old slugger has had quite a career in the big leagues but has been unable to find a Major League Baseball (MLB) team. He has agreed to sign with the EDA Rhinos.

By signing on Ramirez, the Khaoshiung-based team is gaining 19 seasons of MLB experience, including 555 home runs and 1,831 RBIs (runs batted in).

Ramirez retired from the MLB in April 2011 after testing positive for a second time to using performance-enhancing drugs. After the drug incident, he had a stint in the minor league last year with the Oakland A’s, but he was not called back to the major leagues. After spending the winter playing in his native Dominican Republic, he is now ready for a new challenge in the Far East.

In late February, Ramirez said that he would head to Taiwan to play in the Chinese Professional Baseball League if no MLB deal came through by March 7.

“I will play in Taiwan if I cannot get work in the U.S. by that deadline,” Ramirez told ESPN. “It will be a new experience, to experience another culture while I keep doing what I love and what I’ve done in all my life, playing baseball.

Ramirez is undoubtedly talented, but in the U.S. there is debate about the legacy of this controversial player given his use of performance enhancing drugs and clashes with teammates. There is also disagreement about whether he made the most of his talent.

"He didn't take life too seriously," said Yankees catcher Russell Martin who played for the Dodgers with Ramirez. "I feel like some fans live and die with the game. He just didn't take it to that level."

Ramirez’s retired former teammate Omar Vizquel, however, dismissed suggestions that Ramirez did not work as hard as he could have.

"A lot of people don't take it really seriously when they talk about Manny Ramirez,” Vizquel said. “But the guys who have been in the lineup with him and know how he works, his work ethic, he shows up at 2 o'clock every day, he takes extra batting practice every day.”

Vizquel continued, saying that Ramirez “was constantly in the gym lifting weights. His work ethic was very, very good. And some people look at him on the field like, 'Who the hell is this guy? What is he doing?' There are actions that he does on the field that really don't reflect what type of player he was.”

As Taiwan does not rival Japan or South Korea in the size of its baseball market, Ramirez could be angling for a move to Japan. But there is genuine passion for the game. The Rhinos are one of four teams in the Chinese Professional Baseball League. Average attendances range from 2,400 to 3,000 per game over the past two years.

While Ramirez has not revealed his salary, foreign players generally collect a monthly salary of around U.S. $12,000. But for a player who has raked in more than U.S. $200 million during his career, the money would hardly seem to be a factor.

Few expected Australia to win just one gold medal in swimming at the 2012 Olympics. The men’s 4x100-meter relay team was expected to win gold but ended in fourth.

After all, this is a country that prides itself on its ability in the pool and the dearth of gold in London hurt. What hurt more though was the news of what actually happened away from the pool in England, which nobody expected.

In February, members of the men’s 4x100-meter relay team – James Magnussen, Eamon Sullivan, Matthew Targett, Tommaso D'Orsogna and Cameron McEvoy – revealed that during a team-bonding session in Manchester ahead of the games, they used a drug used to treat insomnia called Zolpidem, referred to as Stilnox in Australia.

The pill is already banned by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) and there are growing calls for the drug to be banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Some athletes have become addicted to it and the high that it brings.

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing," Sullivan said at a press conference. "Of course I regret our decisions and my decision.” The leader of the team denied that the drug was behind their disappointing fourth place finish.

Sullivan continued, "As a senior member of the team I should've stood up and shown more leadership at the time. For that, I'm truly sorry. If I thought for one moment that these actions and our communal decision to take Stilnox would affect our performance in no way I would've done it."

Australian swimming legend Dawn Fraser has called for the athletes to be banned.

"Those people who take drugs in sport should be banned forever, not to ever be allowed to come back into sport ... especially in this example,” Fraser told Australian Associated Press. “They should be punished severely because they are setting a bad example for the younger generation for our country. They wouldn't inspire me if I was a youngster coming up in the sport of swimming."

The AOC is launching an investigation into the affair and how it was subsequently handled by Swimming Australia. The committee added that it expects full cooperation from all athletes involved.

Some members of the men’s team also made late night prank phone calls and knocking on the hotel room doors of their female teammates during these bonding sessions.

“We acknowledge that our actions on the night were stupid,” the swimmers said in a statement.

The AOC chief John Coates said that the body is determined to get to the bottom of the affair and ensure that the sport is clean and seen as wholesome by sponsors and the population as a whole.

"The biggest worry I have, because of swimming behavioral problems, is that the public doesn't think as highly of our Olympic teams," Coates said after the opening of the AOC’s new office last Wednesday. "The last thing we want is for the mums and dads not to think of our Olympians as role models. ‘Is that what happens when I send my little girl to the team or my little Johnny to the team?' That's what scares me."

Bangkok may have a reputation for being a concrete jungle, but from February 16 to March 17, the Bukruk Street art festival is giving the cityscape some added color.

Visitors to the festival – displaying works by 26 European and Thai street artists throughout 400 square meters of exhibition space provided by the Bangkok Art and Culture Center (BACC) and 1,000 square meters of exterior wall paintings – are sure to enjoy a break from the mundane.

Next to a motorway, a three- to four-storey image of a funky beachfront complete with Pina Colada (painted by Low Bros) offers a break from Bangkok’s sweltering heat.

Underneath Scala Cinema, strange beings painted by Daan Botlek and Ibie are seen traveling through the walls, to and from imaginary spaces, “adding a mini-wonderland to a gloomy corridor that one would usually avoid,” Bukruk co-organizer and BKK Arthouse co-director Bow Wasinondh told The Diplomat.

Then there is the giant mutated fly, painted by Yuree Kensaku, battling soldiers who are blasting the creature with poisonous beams (courtesy of fellow artist Tawan Wattuya). It “makes you feel like you are witnessing an epic war set in Bangkok ruins,” Wasinondh added.

In Thai, Bukruk literally means “invasion.” The name is fitting. As an article in the Wall Street Journal points out, the artists of Bukruk have invaded Bangkok with their works, which in their turn reflect the mood and terrain of the city. This interplay between artist and place is one the most distinctive aspects of street art.

“I feel the narratives of the city play a big role in shaping Bukruk artists’ works,” Wasinondh said. “Many Thai and European artists draw inspirations, not only from the physical architecture of Bangkok city, but reflect on the layers of stories (community, history, culture) that they experience while exploring the urban settings and Thailand in their paintings.”

Making arrangements for this festival was a lot of leg work for Wasinondh, who spent months getting permission from building owners and businesses in charge of the spaces needed by the artists to execute their aesthetic visions. The effort finally paid dividends and the project took off with the backing of corporate sponsors, the Toot Yung Gallery, Nemo Studio, and even some European embassies and the European Institutes for Culture.

While it may seem strange that this festival – it is graffiti after all – has the backing of European governments, it goes to show the extent to which street art has become mainstream. Street art has become a truly global phenomenon, with colorful graffiti tags and sophisticated murals in full bloom across the Asia-Pacific region’s urban centers, from Hong Kong and Tokyo to Jakarta and Sydney.

With its rise in popularity, street art has made the leap from gritty building sides to gallery walls. This transition is playfully portrayed in the often hilarious documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop, which tracks the exploits of Thierry Guetta (a.k.a. Mr. Brainwash), an eccentric Parisian filmmaker-turned-street artist based in Los Angeles.

Directed by Banksy, a famed British street artist whose work is loaded with satire, dark humor and subversive socio-political commentary, the film shows just how much street art has “invaded” society. Street art has crept into the market in turn.

For those who want to see street art painted by permission, the Bukruk festival offers a good introduction. To see the more subversive roots of this art form – tags and murals in the raw – turn down an alley just about anywhere and take a peak. There are gems to be found there.

To quote Banksy: “Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.”

Given the spirit of the bid, it is fitting that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is in Tokyo just prior to the two year anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011.

For the capital, which is in the race to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, the final lap is approaching. At present, Tokyo is leading a small field that includes Madrid and Istanbul.

As the IOC evaluates the country’s capability to stage the games for a second time – the first was in 1964 – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the visitors that Japan demonstrated just why it deserves to host the 2020 Olympics through its handling of the triple disaster of March 2011

"Japan has its narrative that inspires many. That's why we hope Tokyo will be chosen,” Abe said during a dinner hosted for the IOC. "It is about the disasters we endured, the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear failure. But it is also about the revitalization."

Abe told the IOC that Tokyo would host some football games in the disaster zone and the torch would pass through it.

He added that "the compassion, courage and calmness of those (disaster) victims pushed me to stand again. My hope was that by doing so I could tell the nation that anyone deserves a second chance. That's the powerful message that Tokyo 2020 can send to the whole world."

It has been a good few days for the bid, not only from the official side but also from business.

After meeting with IOC officials, Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho, who also heads the Japan Sports Association, told the IOC that there would be no shortage of corporate support for the Olympics in Tokyo.

"If Tokyo gets the 2020 Olympics, I believe businesses will become sponsors and support them," Cho said Tuesday.

In short, there is support for the bid from the political and business worlds. In some ways, that’s the easy part. Ultimately, public opinion is much harder to influence and much more important.

Fortunately, public support is rising too. This week, a poll conducted by the IOC found that 70 percent of the public in Tokyo and 67 percent of the public across the country as a whole are now in favor of the bid, up from 47 percent in a poll conducted by the IOC in 2011.

Bid president and IOC member Tsunekazu Takeda is a relieved man.

"I was very satisfied with what we did during the inspections this week,” Takeda told Kyodo News. “We want to build on this success for the next step."

There is still some way to go to match the level of professed support that rivals Madrid and Istanbul have. The IOC will visit both cities this month, after which the latest figures will be revealed.

IOC vice president Craig Reedie left with some encouraging words.

“We have been hugely impressed by the quality of the bid presentations made by the bid committee,” he told reporters Thursday in a press conference. "Across the board, they have just been excellent."

There is still work to be done, but as Japan showed two years ago it is more than capable.

The IOC will announce its decision in Buenos Aires on September 7.

India’s Kumbh Mela (literally, “Pitcher Festival”) is mind-boggling in scale.  The largest gathering of humans in one time and place, the event is held every three years, roving between four locations across India. While all four of the events are “mega” in scope, the Maha Kumbh Mela, held on the twelfth year in Allahabad at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers, is the granddaddy of them all.

“The Maha Kumbh Mela is above all an extraordinary spectacle,” Namit Arora, a documentary filmmaker who attended the 2013 Kumbh Mela, told The Diplomat. “Some of its locations, such as the bathing areas and the camps of the Naga ascetics, are full of intense human drama and sociological complexities.”

So great is the size of the gathering that the crowds can purportedly be seen from space. The Maha Kumbh happened to fall in 2013, starting from January 14, and goes until Sunday. On February 10 alone (the main bathing day) an estimated 30 million people, from ash-covered holy men to earnest pilgrims, filed into the Ganges River to take a dip in its frigid waters in the hope that the act would wash away their sins. Photos of this immense bathing ritual can be seen here, while some of the diverse characters populating the event can be seen here.

In his introduction to River of Faith, a documentary he produced from his time at the Maha Kumbh Mela this year, Arora wrote that “ascetics, sadhus, saints, gurus, yogis, sunyasis, bairagis, virakts, fakes, misfits, and crooks of various sects of Hinduism… camp out in tents on the riverbank, lecture and debate, drink milky-syrupy chai, smoke ganja and hashish, and are visited by pilgrims seeking spiritual renewal.”

The dedication earnest pilgrims need to reach the sacred spot is not to be taken lightly. In an academic essay titled Seeing, Being Seen, and Not Being Seen: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Layers of Looking at the Kumbh Mela, Dr. Kama Maclean, associate professor of South Asian and world history at the University of New South Wales, cites a litany of problems and dangers that may befall visitors to the Kumbh Mela, as originally proposed by British sociologist John Urry.

These include: malaria, Giardia, tuberculosis, food poisoning, water contamination, being trampled by Naked Sadhus (as happened at this year’s Kumbh Mela on February 10, leading to 36 deaths at Allahabad railway station), hepatitis, typhoid, rabies, Japanese encephalitis and plague.

“While hazardous travel is styled among some travel subcultures as valiant (think: backpackers’ circuit or the hippies’ trail), this remains an impressive and not entirely exaggerated list of perils to face,” Maclean writes in the paper.

Faced with these risks, armchair travel is an appealing alternative to the real thing. Responding to this need to visit events like the Kumbh Mela virtually, photographs, text and video (like National Geographic’s Inside the Mahakumbh) documenting the scale, drama, color and occasional tragedy of the event have flooded online media outlets during the past two months.

If anything, the spectacle of up to 100 million pilgrims gathering near the bank of the Ganges has attracted perhaps too much attention from both domestic and global media organizations. As a result, the Kumbh Mela has become saturated by and transformed by media coverage to a degree we may not yet comprehend. One result of this media hype can be seen clearly on display at this year’s Maha Kumbh Mela: The festival has become intensely commercial.

“The Kumbh Mela has certainly become more commercial in recent decades,” Arora told The Diplomat. “Not so much due to its coverage by the Indian media, which mostly focuses on urban middle-class lives…. Far more central to the Mela's commercialization, in my view, is the wider penetration of the market economy and associated aspirations across small-town and rural India.”

This push, which Arora calls an “appeal to the masses” – domestic in this case – has not been limited to India. Western travelers toting copies of Lonely Planet dutifully make their way to the Kumbh thanks to the hype that now surrounds the event in the Western imagination. In Seeing, Being Seen and Not Being Seen, Maclean notes that the event is on the list of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, a consumer’s guide to adventure travel.

“The backpacker’s bible, Lonely Planet, recommends that the intrepid traveler endeavor to hire a boat at the sangam ‘with Indians on pilgrimage’ on board, so that their experience of the mela is as ‘authentic’ as possible; there is no consideration of how this might impact the pilgrims, who in all likelihood have traveled long distances at great expense to perform their rituals.”

Alas, not even a boat ride with real pilgrims guarantees an authentic experience at the Kumbh Mela today. According to an article in Pitch – which offers reduced figures of 80 million for this year’s Maha Kumbh Mela, resonating with Maclean’s assertion that accurate data is hard to come by – marketing ran amuck at this year’s Kumbh. “A sea of brands have taken a holy dip at the festival; each vying for the crowd’s attention through innovative branding and advertising,” the article reads.

From branded roti (unleavened bread) designed to promote the HUL (Hindustan Unilever) brand of soap to more than 15 Coca-Cola vendors dotted across the festival’s grounds, consumerism was fully entrenched along the mighty Ganges this year.

While it’s easy to be hypocritical in judging these things – after all, the Western world is responsible for inventing the bulk of consumer culture that has overrun traditional events like the Kumbh Mela – it’s a sobering indication of the true extent of consumerism’s reach.

Many are scratching their heads about how to promote Chinese football to the world.

For some, the answer is developing young players who are good enough to help Chinese clubs reach a higher standard. From there, they could eventually win the Asian Champions League.

Gradually, the country could go on to produce players capable of competing in the world’s best leagues. Then, perhaps, the national team could qualify for the World Cup on a regular basis.

To actually achieve all this, however, China’s football stakeholders and teams must invest significant time, money and effort at the grassroots level. Even then, it could take many years.

The good news is that this process has now begun. There is a large-scale training program underway at schools around the country, launched by the Chinese Football Association and Education Ministry and overseen by Tom Byer, an American former professional footballer. Byer is a leading expert in youth development with years of experience in Japan, where he was a television celebrity known as “Tom-san” and helped lift the profile of Japanese football.

Or, another approach: You could hire David Beckham to act as national football ambassador. The world-famous athlete, who has played for Manchester United, Real Madrid, LA Galaxy, AC Milan and, most recently, Paris St Germain, recently said in a statement released by IMG: “I am honored to have been asked to play such an important role at this special time in Chinese football history.”

Beckham added: “I’m excited by the prospect of promoting the world’s greatest game to Chinese sports fans as I’ve seen firsthand the growing interest in football there. This is a wonderful sport that inspires people across the world and brings families together, so I’m relishing the opportunity of introducing more fans to the game.”

The move is quite a PR push for the Chinese Super League, which made headlines last year when Shanghai Shenhua paid big money to sign English Premier League stars Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka.

The buzz was short lived, however, when Shanghai Shenhua’s unpredictable CEO Zhu Jun, an online gaming tycoon, had a spat with the club’s shareholders. Chaos ensued and Drogba and Anelka were not paid as agreed. They soon returned to Europe.

In an attempt to turn things around, the Chinese Football Association settled on the current course and welcomed the Englishman in a statement.

“His (Beckham’s) arrival will bring international attention to Chinese football and at the same time his personal involvement will be a good way to make Chinese football more international,” it reads.

Despite the hype surrounding Beckham’s new role, some wonder if hiring the megastar is really the right way forward.

An article published in the People’s Daily Online argues, “While spending loads of money hiring international stars like Beckham, the CSL should make efforts to improve the quality of its ‘products’.”