Komazawa Olympic Park

Komazawa Olympic Park is a roughly 41-hectare sports ground in Setagaya ward in southwestern Tokyo. It opened in 1964 as the second main venue of the Olympic Games, hosting volleyball, wrestling, hockey and football matches, replacing an earlier festival ground destroyed during the war. The concrete venues with their angular rooflines, and the freestanding Olympic Tower whose silhouette echoes a pagoda finial, were designed by architect Yoshinobu Ashihara and stand as a postwar modernist landmark. Today Tokyo residents jog the 2.1-kilometre loop, families picnic on the lawns, and children rent bikes for the traffic-free cycling course. Weekends bring skateboarders to the stadium forecourt.