TOKYO — Norie Kosaka knew better than to get her hopes up. A volunteer at the Olympic Games, she had been assigned to work at the opening ceremony on Friday night and naturally assumed she would be one of the workers placed outside Olympic Stadium or tucked into some faraway corridor.
Instead, her supervisors informed her that she would be stationed inside the lower bowl of stands, just a few rows from the glittering, hourslong extravaganza. Her heart swelled.
“They told me, ‘You can watch a little bit,’” she said about her bosses. “So I was very happy.