A total of 90 local governments from 37 prefectures have applied to host official team training camps for the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, tournament organizers said Wednesday.
The number of applications they filed by the deadline in December came to 76, organizers said, adding that candidate sites will be selected this summer and that national teams taking part in the tourney will inspect them and decide next year which one to use.
Akira Shimazu, chief executive of the organizing committee, indicated that an upper limit will not be set for the number of candidate sites, saying he wants any location that meets the criteria for camp sites to be considered as contenders.
"The state of applications is great in terms of stretching across various regions and the total number," Shimazu said.
For the 2015 World Cup in England, 41 out of 61 candidate sites were used.
Fifty-seven local governments filed applications individually, while 19 of the submissions were joint efforts by multiple bodies.
Fukushima Prefecture envisions using the J-Village soccer training center, straddling the towns of Naraha and Hirono, which will be revitalized after serving as the forward base for dealing with the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.