There was something unfair about breezing past them all today with the media accreditation draped around my neck, coasting through checkpoints that stopped any of them ever getting too close to feel truly part of these Games.

Entering the Olympic stadium, beautifully presented for opening night, the overriding thought was this could - this should - be something others also experienced, especially when life carries on here with such normality.

On one of the brief sojourns from my hotel yesterday to retrieve take-away food (the only non-stadium departures we're allowed) I passed restaurants that were packed to capacity in downtown Tokyo, coffee shops that were brimming with people socialising indoors. Then I passed an outdoor concert with what looked - through a distant gate - like several thousand fans sitting together, masked but not socially distanced...visibly enjoying the show in a sensible, relatively safe manner.

It brought home, as has so often been the case during this pandemic, that there is one rule for some and a different for others. In Tokyo's case, the Olympics has unfortunately developed the reputation of a loutish intruder, and inviting it to their place for a sporting knees-up seemed an increasingly difficult concept for many to grasp as case numbers escalated in recent weeks.

And so the plan to allow up to 10,000 local fans at events, or 50 percent capacity, was discarded. Now the stands will be empty, the world's best athletes putting on the world's best show only for a distant TV audience.

It seems unjust in a country that put so much into this, not least the $15 billion being spent to stage it, about two thirds of which is public money. This is also, remember, a country that has so far handled the pandemic in admirable fashion, compared to us in the west, a country that learned to live with the virus in a reasonable manner long before that concept gained any traction back in Ireland.

Perhaps its ability to do so has something to do with its (mostly) law-abiding citizens. Anyone who made the trip here is now all-too-familiar with Japan's affinity for rules, and it was a point rammed home on my way to the stadium today.

Arriving at a junction where all roads were closed to traffic, I stepped out to cross one and was immediately stopped in my tracks by a panicked policeman, blowing his whistle. I stepped back among the locals who were patiently waiting for a green man to appear despite no cars being within two blocks of us. A moment later a German photographer arrived and was equally baffled when he did the same thing, but we stood, we waited, because this is their home, their truly incredible city, and we're conscious of just how lucky we are to be welcomed to it.

Upon arrival at the stadium, walking past the legions of smiling, waving fans, there dawned an eerie quietness once I got past security. That was soon broken by the chattering excitement among a horde of volunteers snapping pictures with the Olympic rings. They were the lucky few allowed access. Your heart went out to the tens of thousands who had signed up and given their time in the same way but who were frozen out.

The ceremony was what opening ceremonies tend to be: long, but with a typically stirring blend of music, dance and local traditions from one of the richest cultures that exists. There was a moment of silence for the lives lost in the pandemic, and for the 11 Israelis killed during the 1972 Munich massacre.

In parts the ceremony was beautifully evocative, in parts it dragged on like a bad mass. And at the end of it in came the athletes, the best physical specimens on planet earth, the ones for whom all this effort, all these headaches, were deemed worthwhile.

In came Greece, out front as always. In came Ireland, with boxers Kellie Harrington and Brendan Irvine, two of our finest athletes and representatives, holding the tricolour aloft, bowing to the hosts as they entered. The smiling volunteers bowed back, happy to have them.

And at the end of the athletes parade, in walked Japan, the joy etched across the athletes' faces. Sure, this wasn't what any of them envisioned when Tokyo was awarded the Games back in 2013, but it was still something special, something important, a memory all of them would hold forever, one they likely feared would be snatched from them along with all else that's been taken over the last 18 months.

The moment we all had waited for didn't disappoint, with tennis star Naomi Osaka etching her name into history and lighting the Olympic flame. Given the year she's had, she seemed an appropriate poster girl for the Games: smiling through adversity, resilient against great difficulties.

And when it was all done and we walked away, that orange flame dancing in the night sky, drawing your gaze from all the darkness elsewhere, it was hard not to be held captive - however briefly - by its bright, brilliant glow.