Just kidding folks, just kidding, but you've gotta strike while the iron is hot! 

And things are certainly hotting up in the J-League, where several scintillating matches took place this weekend.

Things kicked off in front of 22,168 fans at Ajinomoto Stadium in Tokyo, where FC Tokyo finally cracked a home win, beating Oita Trinita 1-0. Paulo Wanchope made his first start in some time for Tokyo, and he laid on the only goal for the capital club, heading down for ex-Japan international Yasuyuki Konno to finish.

The real excitement took place just up the road, however, where 50,531 fans packed into Saitama Stadium to see a genuine slugfest between Japan's two Asian Champions League combatants. This match had everything, including a bizarre public spat that took place before kick-off between Marcus Tulio Tanaka - arguably Japan's best defender, and Japan coach Ivica Osim.

Coach Osim had scheduled a brief training session for Japan before this weekend's round of J-League matches. Urawa had claimed that Tanaka was injured, but sent the tenacious defender to the camp anyway. It was here, Tanaka claims, that Osim forced him to take part in several drills, where he further inflamed the injury that kept him out of the match with Kawasaki. 

A forlorn Tanaka sat high in the stands at Saitama Stadium and watched in horror as ex-JEF United midfielder Yuki Abe (these days a defender at Urawa, whose policy of signing ten midfielders for every one position now appears to be hindering them) stood idly by while Kazuki Ganaha burst in behind him to tap home Masaru Kurotsu's gently rolling cross.

For all those non-Urawa fans watching on TV (like myself) things got even better, when Urawa generously allowed the rangy Juninho time and space to deliver a cross. He delivered a cross alright, straight into the path of Magnum, who gleefully waltzed in front of goalkeeper Ryota Tsuzuki to "knee" the ball into the back of the net, in a somewhat unsightly fashion. 

Not to be outdone in the scrappy goal stakes, Urawa then scored the scrappiest one of them all, when Satoshi Horinouchi produced a spectacular - and rare - diving shoulder goal, after he appeared to be bear-hugged from behind by several desperate Kawasaki defenders. That was the only goal that the Reds could muster, however, as Frontale silenced the legion of Urawa glory-hunters fans packed into the stadium.

After that match I set out for Nihondaira in high hopes and with high spirits.  It wouldn't last. Kashima Antlers beat Shimizu S-Pulse 2-1, with former Messina striker Atsushi Yanagisawa - who some believe the word ineffective was actually invented for, miraculously scored twice to see off the home team. Worse still, his finishes were clinical - and the second came from a cross by ex-S-Pulse striker Marquinhos! Shimizu could only respond with a thirty-five yard rocket from defender Daisuke Ichikawa that threatened to send the goal-frame hurtling over Mount Fuji, but that was as much as a disappointing S-Pulse could conjure, as they sunk to a second home defeat of the season.

I came home to learn that Ventforet Kofu had come from behind to beat Kashiwa Reysol 3-2. I had the opportunity to watch Ventforet Kofu vs Vissel Kobe a few weeks ago, but chose not to. A wise decision, if I may say so, given that Kofu only managed a weak, last minute, come-from-behind 4-3 win over Kashiwa, who were at the time flying high near the top of the table. This time around Kofu opted for a more subtle comeback of the two goal variety. They went 2-1 down when substitute Tadanari Ri scored for Reysol, and things looked bleak with ten minutes remaining when another substitute in Kazunari Hosaka entered the fray. "Not to worry," thought Hosaka, who promptly scored twice for Kofu in the space of six minutes, to seal an improbable 3-2 win for the team from rural Yamanishi Prefecture.

Fortunately things calmed down on the Sunday, where nil-nil draws were always going to be the order of the day. That's not how it panned out, mind you, as Gamba Osaka smashed Jubilo Iwata 5-2 - bringing joy to the hearts of disgruntled Shimizu fans everywhere. Not to be outdone, Yokohama F. Marinos annihilated Oita Trinita 5-0 at Nissan Stadium, prompting thousands of J-League fans to simultaneously quip, "I never expected that!" Such is the wonder of the J-League, where unexpected results are never more than ninety minutes away.

I'm beginning to understand what the great Australian football broadcaster Les Murray was getting at when he said in his autobiography "By The Balls," that analysing football for a living can be a grinding experience.

That's certainly what watching Shimizu S-Pulse's 0-0 League Cup draw against Kashiwa Reysol last Wednesday night felt like. That result means that, for the second season in a row, Shimizu S-Pulse have been knocked out at the group stage of the League Cup.

The result was arguably more interesting for the fact that Kashiwa bludgeoned their way to a draw, with any promising S-Pulse attack invariably broken up by a foul. That tactic has brought Kashiwa success in the J-League as well, but it's sure to infuriate opposition players and fans alike - and the angry scenes after Kashiwa had beaten S-Pulse in the League Cup earlier in the season, bear testament to that.

Elsewhere in the League Cup, defending champions JEF United look a good bet to progress to the quarter-finals, despite their 1-0 loss to Gamba Osaka in their most recent match. They should be joined by Oita Trinita and Ventforet Kofu, although Shimizu's group is a lot tighter, with Omiya Ardija the favourites to go through.

After the disappointment of Wednesday's result, I was hoping for better things in Shimizu's J-League blockbuster with Kawasaki Frontale on Sunday. As it was, Shimizu went down 2-1 in a pulsating encounter, but only after a terrible backpass by Arata Kodama (I think...I may have been blinded with rage at the time) gifted an equaliser to substitute Masaru Kurotsu. A shell-shocked S-Pulse immediately conceded a second, to the delight of the majority of the 21,208 fans inside a packed Todoroki Stadium.

The real match of the day was probably at the National Stadium in Tokyo, however, where 35,013 fans witnessed Urawa Reds beat the aforementioned Kashiwa Reysol 2-0. Washington and Shinji Ono scored the goals in front of a sea of Urawa fans, with Reysol's Kashiwa Stadium far too small to accommodate the Reds' travelling army.

There was a similar scenario in Yokohama, where a crowd of nearly 20,000 turned out to witness Yokohama FC go down 1-0 to an out-of-form Kashima Antlers on Saturday. Both matches were interesting in that the partisan atmospheres generated at Mitsuzawa Stadium and Kashiwa Stadium respectively were negated, by the necessity to play in a much larger stadium.

Coming full circle then, and its interesting to note that Shimizu S-Pulse have switched their derby with Jubilo Iwata from Ecopa Stadium - a 2002 World Cup venue, back to their spiritual home of Nihondaira Stadium. S-Pulse have even gone to trouble of printing t-shirts proclaiming as much, with the unpopular Ecopa a sixty minute train ride from Shimizu. Just goes to show that when it comes to generating an atmosphere, sometimes less truly is more.

Just kidding folks, just kidding! I thought one way to get everyone interested in Japanese football is simply to talk about the English Premier League.

It seems that interest in Japanese football is on the wane, even *gasp* right here in Japan! While I can understand that Kashiwa Reysol vs FC Tokyo might not capture the attention of your average fan from Barcelona to Bury, I think it's a little concerning that media coverage of the J-League in Japan is plummeting as fast as the attendance figures of certain clubs.

According to The Rising Sun News - which is by far and away the best resource on Japanese football...on the web or elsewhere, interest in the J-League is dwindling, both in the media and with your more casual fans. And on the issue of decreasing interest in the league, The Rising Sun News has been most vocal on the topic of the poor standard of refereeing in Japan. I can see why.

When Shimizu S-Pulse took on Yokohama F. Marinos in the League Cup last weekend, I was really not looking forward to attending the match. That was for the simple reason that, in the previous two matches, both against Kashiwa Reysol - once in the J-League and once in the League Cup, S-Pulse had been on the receiving end of some seriously dubious refereeing. 

I took it with a grain of salt, since in 2006, Shimizu had been the beneficiaries of poor refereeing on numerous occasions. And they were the beneficiaries once again on Saturday afternoon, when referee Masaaki Iemoto gave a straight red card to Omiya's new signing Mauricio Salles just eight minutes into his Omiya debut.

The send-off probably had little impact on the outcome of the match, since Shimizu were playing Omiya off the park anyway. But what impact will it have on the miserly 7,737 crowd that bothered to turn up at Komaba Stadium - where standing behind the goals offers you the same kind of view that you might have if you were standing on the moon? 

I think I know. People stop coming. And who can blame them? When they can just as easily sit at home and watch Liverpool vs Arsenal instead, there's little incentive for the casual fan to get out to a windswept Japanese stadium, only to watch their team's chances disappear down the drain - which is where any credibility that J-League referees once had, has long since disappeared.