Japan's Olympic minister Yoshitaka Sakurada handed over his resignation after a wave of outrage over comments he made about the recovery from the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami.

At a party for a ruling party lawmaker in Iwate Prefecture, Sakurada said re-electing the politician was more important than disaster recovery.  Iwate was one of the areas hard-hit by the disaster, and many areas have yet to rebuild.  Aside from being a ridiculously awful thing to say it was not in keeping with Japan's official theme for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, whose main theme is to promote reconstruction of the disaster-struck region.

Sakurada apologized for hurting peoples' feelings, but it's not the first time he's had to do that because insensitive gaffes.  In February he said he was disappointed by Japanese swimmer Rikako Ikee's leukaemia diagnosis because it might dampen enthusiasm for the games he was promoting.

Last year, the gaffe-prone 69-year old admitted that he never uses computers, which is an odd habit for someone who doubles as Japan's cyber-security minister.