With rights distributed to different broadcasters across the world, finding an easy way to follow along with the TV coverage of the Olympics can be a tricky business, especially if you don’t have a television.
But for those watching in Japan there are a couple of sites where you can stream Olympic coverage for free.
For those looking for coverage with English commentary, visit NHK’s Olympic homepage. Though the navigation is all in Japanese, it’s mostly in katakana and Google Chrome’s translate function can make navigation easier. For live events, look for the section titled “ライブ.”
Once in the video player, you can choose to either watch without commentary, or with English commentary. Locate the headphones icon (labelled 実況) at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and select “英語” for English commentary. The default is sound off when you first load the video player, so make sure you turn it on to hear the commentary.
NHK also has a good selection of highlights with English commentary.
If you’re linguistically dexterous enough to navigate Japanese commentary, visit gorin.jp, which has a similarly good selection of live-streaming events and highlights. Navigate to the “Live” section to see all the available live feeds. Depending on the event, commentary in English may also be available (again, look for a headphone icon).
The site also handily lists information on the competition, competitors and competitor nations beneath the video player.