Construction of the new National Stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will begin in January or February, AP reported. The government will choose a new design and builder through an international competition with the aim of completing the stadium by the spring of 2020, Sports Minister Hakubun Shimomura said on Tuesday. The government scrapped the original design on Friday because of soaring costs which reached $2 billion. Construction of that stadium was supposed to begin in October, and be completed in May 2019 in time for that year's Rugby World Cup. Shimomura also said he was considering setting up an independent panel to find out why construction costs of the scrapped stadium were so high.
