It's expected to be the most expensive summer Olympics ever.
That financial price tag is about US$15.4 billion - double what was initially expected when Japan bid for the Games.
There's been no tourist boom of foreigners watching the sports in person while discovering the delights of the host country and mixing with the locals.
There have also been health costs, with the coronavirus spreading in Japan during the Olympics.
As they drew to a close, Tokyo reported 5042 new cases, its highest daily count. Overall daily cases in Japan exceeded 15,000 for the first time. This week on Wednesday new cases hit 15,800, with 4200 in Tokyo. About 40 million people, or just shy of 40 per cent of the population, are fully vaccinated.
There have been more than 500 confirmed Games-related cases, yet it doesn't appear so far to have been the superspreader event health experts had feared.
The strict protocols of banning spectators at most events, keeping participants in a bubble, daily testing and a high level of vaccinations among those involved seem to have worked.
"With spectators, the Olympics would have been much more likely to be a superspreader event. Without spectators, and carefully executed protocols, it seems ... a well managed Covid strategy," Professor Hans Westerbeek of Victoria University told Newsweek.
Keeping spectators away came at a huge financial sacrifice. Before the Games were delayed last year, 4.48 million tickets had been sold. They would have brought in more than US$800 million. The Olympics were also a downer for Japanese companies who supplied billions to sponsor it.
The pandemic Games blew away an anticipated economic windfall for the country from tourism.
Pre-Covid, Japan was tied with Spain, France and Germany as the top countries for tourists in a 2019 World Economic Forum ranking.
Japan's lure as a tourist drawcard has grown over the past decade to about 32.3 million visitors in 2019, who spent an estimated US$43.6b. That compares to 13.4 million tourists in 2014.
It's well below the foot traffic into France, the next Olympic hosts, a country that attracts nearly 90 million tourists a year.
The Olympics could have served as a great showcase for Japan's distinctive culture and host city, and, in normal times, would have burnished the country's profile.
But then again, the benefits of hosting the Games have been dubious in modern times - made more so this time by a sudden coronavirus calamity.
In 2018 the Council on Foreign Relations wrote: "A growing number of economists argue that both the short- and long-term benefits of hosting the Games are at best exaggerated and at worst nonexistent, leaving many host countries with large debts and maintenance liabilities".
Just submitting bids to host the summer Games costs tens of millions of dollars.
And the costs of actually hosting, such as building stadiums and transport links, far outpace the revenue gained.
Countries with established, existing infrastructure, rather than those that set out on Olympic-sized building programmes, do better at avoiding gigantic debts. Los Angeles in 1984 managed to make a profit for that reason.
Paris celebrated the handover of Olympics summer hosting with a flypast of the Eiffel Tower. It last hosted the Games in 1924.
The Olympics a century on in 2024 will follow the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France. Paris Saint-Germain has just snaffled Lionel Messi. It will be the place to be for sports fans.
That's if tourists actually need specific reasons to visit and revisit France. On the face of it, the country seems set up for a post-pandemic tourism boom.
With long-time German Chancellor Angela Merkel stepping down and Britain in Brexit self-isolation, President Emmanuel Macron also has the chance to enhance his role in Europe and the world should he win re-election next year.
Then again, the best-laid plans, hopes and dreams don't always come to fruition. Just look at Tokyo and Japan.
