Japan is traditionally a baseball country, and the baseball season really starts to heat up by the time the summer rolls around.

It's not the only thing that heats up, and in a country that insulation puzzlingly bypassed, people everywhere are looking to flee their apartments and small houses to try and beat the heat.

It used to be that baseball stadiums across the country were packed on these balmy summer evenings, but these days the bleechers sometimes seem less crowded than usual.

Perhaps that has something to do with the advent of the J-League, and attendances in football stadiums across the country this week may bear that out.

Nearly 54,000 fans descended upon Nissan Stadium in Yokohama last weekend, although Yokohama FC fans must have been considering hara-kiri by the end of it, as their team was astonishingly crushed 8-1 by Yokohama F. Marinos. Talk about revenge! Yokohama F. Marinos had slumped to an humiliating 1-0 defeat to their cross-town rivals earlier in the season - Yokohama FC's first ever win in the top flight, but F. Marinos wreaked their vengeance at Nissan Stadium and then some. Hideo Oshima scored four, Koji Yamase scored twice and if they let a stray dog on the pitch he would have scored too, as Yokohama FC capitulated in a strangely compelling fashion... for everyone but Yokohama FC fans.

47,359 fans packed into Saitama Stadium to see Urawa draw 1-1 with Kashiwa Reysol, a result that Gamba Osaka took advantage of by beating third placed outfit Albirex Niigata 3-1 in front of 18,112 fans at 'Banpaku.'

The attendance patterns were repeated across the country - 16,070 fans turned out at Fukuda Denshi Arena to jeer JEF United on to yet another embarrassing loss, 15,047 fans rocked up to Nihondaira Stadium to see if new Omiya coach Satoru Sakuma would spontaneously combust on the touchline - he didn't, and Omiya held their hosts to a 2-2 draw (much to this correspondent's annoyance), 14,316 fans managed to find their way to Kose Sports Park Stadium (they must have been locals) and even Sanfrecce Hiroshima managed to draw a crowd of 12,595 fans at their decrepit Big Arch Stadium - only another 40,000 or so to go 'til you get a full house guys!

The O-Bon holidays here in Japan are intended as a time for people to return to their home towns to rediscover their familial roots, although as far as I can tell most people just use it as a time to go a midweek sporting contest.

That meant bumper crowds for the midweek round of fixtures as well, as 19,600 fans turned out at Kashima Stadium to witness Kashima hand to JEF United their dignity on a plate in a 3-1 win, while 42,015 fans saw the 'full house' sign go up at Big Swan Stadium, as Albirex Niigata thrashed Nagoya Grampus Eight 4-0. 14,854 fans demonstrated what a decent atmosphere can be conjured at Yamaha Stadium if the locals actually bothered to get behind their team, as Jubilo Iwata thumped FC Tokyo 5-2, while the Kanagawa Derby attracted a crowd of 18,095 as Yokohama F. Marinos did the double over Kawasaki Frontale this year.

The big clash, of course, was at Expo '70 Stadium in Osaka, where some of the locked-out locals were doing the old Leichhardt Stadium trick and climbing trees outside the ground to try and get a vantage point as Gamba Osaka and Urawa went head-to-head in front of 20,912 fans.

Fortunately the fact that most of the English-language press seem to be on holidays (or suffering from heat-stroke) spared us from too many "battle of the giants!" headlines in the papers, as Urawa ultimately prevailed 1-0 thanks to Yuichiro Nagai's lone strike. Ryuji Bando had a goal ruled out for offside in the first half - who'd have guessed! - as Urawa coincidentally hauled themselves back into the title race, just as Gamba had looked likely to run away with the league and make the rest of the season fairly boring for everyone but JEF United fans.

I've been lucky enough to see some of the biggest punk bands on the planet.

I've seen Agnostic Front tear up Klub Eskulap in western Poland. I've run a gauntlet between protesting Christian fundamentalists and Marilyn Manson fans lining up to buy tickets, on my way to see legendary Los Angeles act Bad Religion in Düsseldorf. I've witnessed an on-stage marriage proposal - and acceptance - at a Sick Of It All show, and had the same band dedicate Injustice System to me in front of more than 15,000 fans at an outdoor festival in Germany.

I've watched bands like Raised Fist and Ensign play in front of twenty-five people and invest more energy into their sets than some people do their entire lives. I've heard the strain of emotion in Zoli's voice when Ignite played Poverty For All in Prague, and I've seen hundreds of fans burst into the Yokohama Cultural Centre as the opening riff of Everready boomed out from New York's prodigal sons H2O. I've seen just about every recent Australian punk band you care to name.

The memories of these shows, acquired over years of blurry nights at sweaty clubs packed with angry kids, share a common theme. Passion. That's something that I don't see a lot of on the football pitch these days.

What I see a lot of are players who talk the talk. You know the type. They sign for a club. They kiss the badge every time they score. They engineer some kind of falling out with the manager, sign for their former club's biggest rivals, kiss a new badge and tell all and sundry that it has always been their dream to "play for this club." And then two years later they do it all again. It's an insult to the fans.

Fans seem to be the forgotten factor in some leagues. Back in 2000 I called the ticket office of Southampton FC and had a conversation that went like this...

Us: "Hello, can you please tell me what your cheapest ticket costs for the match against Liverpool?"

Them: "28 pounds."

Us: "28 pounds? Do you have anything cheaper?"

Them: "That's how much it costs to watch top quality football."

Us: "But I pay about five pounds to watch Borussia Dortmund - and they won the European Cup three years ago.

Them: *click*

Welcome to the brave new world of the English Profit League - Where We'll Always Treat You Like A Customer, Hold The Line Please!

If ever a league has misunderstood fan culture, it's the J-League. If ever there was one team synonymous with that misunderstanding, it is the Yokohama Flügels.

The Yokohama Flügels don't exist any more. Ever wondered where the "F" in Yokohama F. Marinos comes from? Now you know. The Flügels were absorbed by the Marinos in 1998 when the bubble burst in Japan and some men in suits calmly informed their respective clubs that they were merging. The merger took place overnight, with no consultation of coaches or players - let alone fans. In Japan, business mergers happened all the time... the respective owners of the Marinos and Flügels saw little difference between those mergers and the merger of two football clubs.

Yet at a time when the mercurial Hidetoshi Nakata was thumbing his nose at the Japanese hierarchy, the merger of the two Yokohama clubs unleashed the wrath of Hades on these bumbling Japanese bureaucrats. Fans from both clubs reacted furiously and set in motion concerted campaigns to have the merger annulled. If there is one thing that Japanese bureaucrats love more than making hare-brained decisions, however, it is steadfastly refusing to back down from those decisions, no matter how inappropriate they seem.

So, fast-forwarding almost a decade, you could forgive Yokohama FC fans for being a tad more passionate than usual about this weekend's clash with cross-town rivals Yokohama F. Marinos. "But who are Yokohama FC?" I hear you yelp. They're a club founded by former Flügels fans, after their own team was taken out from under their feet. Around 40,000 of those fans descended upon Nissan Stadium to watch their rock bottom misfits lose 1-0 to JEF United in the last match before the mid-season break. If the J-League isn't careful, Nissan Stadium could well be rocking to the tune of 70,000 fans this weekend.

Fans, huh. Remember them?

http://www.tribalfootball.com/article.php?id=32619

The 2007 J-League All-Star game might have thrown up a few challenges for those English commentators still fond of throwing about hackneyed clichés when describing football from parts of the world other than England.

In Thailand, I watched on TV as Manchester United battled to a 2-2 draw against a Urawa side missing its Asian Cup contingent, and like anyone familiar with Japanese football, I couldn't help but laugh as guest commentator Jeremy Walker tried desperately to smooth over some of the gaffes from his co-commentator, whose identity unfortunately escaped me.

While Walker retains close links to Urawa - he penned the homepage to Urawa's English language website, it was clear that his co-commentator was more than taken aback by Japanese football, or so it seemed, as every well-placed pass or piece of decent ball control was met with a gasp of astonishment and an admission that he was "surprised by the high level of Urawa's play. Our commentator in question would have been calling for an oxygen mask if he witnessed the All-Star game, where four of the five goals were scored through headers.

The fact that only Kazuki Ganaha managed to score with his feet during the All-Star game cast my mind back to Japan's disappointing Asian Cup campaign. For all their obvious talent, Japanese players at the Asian Cup seemed unwilling to shoot. 

Long gone are the days when Japanese players were simply brushed aside by brusque defenders. Naohiro Takahara had no trouble finding the net for Eintract Frankfurt in the Bundesliga last season, while Shunsuke Nakamura shrugged off claims that he was too fragile for the Scottish Premier League to claim the Player Of The Year crown. In the J-League too, youngsters like Robert Cullen and Mike Havenaar employ a mixture of technique and physique, while the likes of Hiroshima striker Hisato Sato and veteran Kobe man Yoshito Okubo possess both the pace and the wiles to slice through opposition defences.  

All of this begs the question: why aren't the Blue Samurai raining goals in on their opposition? The first hint of an answer probably comes with the striking personnel favoured at the Asian Cup. While Takahara is undoubtedly Japan's number one striker, he turned in some lukewarm performances in South-East Asia, and when the powerful Frankfurt striker is not firing, Japan usually struggle. Lanky JEF United striker Seiichiro Maki started on occasion, but generally Gamba Osaka midfielder Yasuhito Endo started in the hole behind Takahara, when surely Hiroshima's Sato or Albirex Niigata man Kisho Yano would have been better options.

Endo, at least, is a capable sharp-shooter from long range, demonstrated by his free-kick against Vietnam. So too is Kengo Nakamura, but he seemed to defer to his more famous namesake Shunsuke every time he received the ball. Perhaps the two Nakamura's were put off by the sight of Gamba Osaka defender Akira Kaji firing the ball into the crowd with monotonous regularity with attempted crosses, while JEF United midfielder Naotake Hanyu combined an astonishing miss in the opening match against Qatar by thumping the crossbar with an unstoppable drive in the third/fourth playoff defeat to Korea Republic.

Perhaps Hanyu was put off by his inexplicable miss in the opening game, but perhaps there is also some truth to the notion that Japanese players are concerned by the loss of face brought about by a missed shot at goal. Perhaps it's a cultural thing? While I'm loathe to add to some of the ill-conceived misconceptions bandied about in regard to Asian football, there certainly seemed to be a difference in attitude between Australia - whose legion of foreign stars at times employed a shoot-on-sight policy, and Japan, whose intricate build-up play was rarely rewarded. Japan, it appeared, were a team in search of the perfect goal.

The All-Star game seemed to reinforce that notion. Plenty of intricate build-up play in midfield, plenty of intelligent runs down the flanks, plenty of crosses - four headed goals. Nevermind that Jubilo Iwata veteran Masashi Nakayama opened the scoring by heading into his own net, he made up for that goal by scoring with a header at the other end later in the match. Indeed the other goalscorers arguably underlined Japan's goal-scoring problems at the Asian Cup - Hisato Sato, Kazuki Ganaha and Yoshito Okubo were all mentioned as potential Asian Cup players, yet only the free-scoring Sato made the squad, and he was used sparingly as a substitute.    

The current top scorers in the J-League make for telling reading. The top three goal-scorers are all Brazilian, Sato and Okubo are locked on nine goals with yet more Brazilians in Bare and Juninho, Norwegian Frode Johnsen continues to find the net for Nagoya, while Shimizu S-Pulse place most of their faith in Korean striker Cho Jae-Jin.

I once watched FC Tokyo spend at least half an hour on long-range shooting practice, before Norio Suzuki and Yuta Baba scored with two stupendous long-range strikes at Nihondaira Stadium. For all their intelligent movement and intricate build-up play in midfield, perhaps some good old fashioned shooting practice is also in order for Japan, if they are to ultimately make a greater mark on the international scene.