There were plenty of highlights for Shimizu S-Pulse fans when the J-League draw was made last January. The derby with Jubilo always takes precedence, but the Round 32 clash with Urawa Reds at Saitama Stadium was also a stand-out fixture. As one of the lucky few to score a ticket in the away end at Saitama, I thought I'd share with you some of my experiences, in what was essentially a day in the life of a J-League fan.

The day starts early. For dedicated fans of clubs like Oita Trinita or Consadole Sapporo, an away match means a trip to Japan's main island of Honshu and often an entire weekend of travel. For me, this match meant an early Sunday morning rise - the official S-Pulse organised tour bus left Shimizu station just before 5am! Domestic rail travel in Japan is expensive, particularly on the Shinkansen, so for the money-conscious the choice often falls between driving or taking one of the club-organised tour buses to the stadium.

Normally bus travel is something I look upon as a necessary evil. I've travelled the length and breadth of England quite comfortably on National Express coaches, but then National Express coaches don't have a habit of arriving at their destination six hours early!

Japan is nothing if not a unique place, and one of the peculiarities of its upstanding citizens is their willingness - scratch that, desire, to line up! These guys would beat the English in a Olympics Queue-Off hands down, and in anticipation of a 2pm kick-off, it was with a heavy heart that I disembarked from the bus at the ungodly hour of 8am! Being a self-proclaimed man of the world there was little to do but whip out a newspaper and catch up on yesterday's news.

"Why do people line up so early to enter the stadium?" you might reasonably ask. It has to do with the fact that General Admission is a popular concept in Japan. That is to say that many fans buy non-numbered tickets - reserved seating in Japan is usually the last to sell-out, and will then arrive at the stadium hours in advance in the hope of scoring the best seats available. While most fans use the long wait as an excuse to put on an impromptu picnic, I can't help but feel that the method takes away from some of the more ritualistic elements of attending a match.

Saitama Stadium is one of those super modern arenas built on the outskirts of town that FIFA seem to prefer these days. There's no chance of a quick pre-match pint - the stadium lies in a middle of a field literally miles from the city centre, and any hopes I had of enjoying an early afternoon brew in the beer garden (okay, plastic tables and chairs put out on the stadium forecourt) were dashed by the fact that I didn't want to be the only fan whose view was obscured by an errant pillar. So I piled in with the rest of my early-morning bus-trippers and spent several hours watching the shadows creep slowly across the pitch.

Both sets of supporters set about creating an atmosphere, with Shimizu's away end packed by around 3,000 travelling fans. Yet the atmosphere from the Urawa fans was strangely lacklustre, not the least because most of those in the reserved seating seemed to take their seats only moments before kick-off. Even then, those fans remained quiet for most of the match - it was hardly the kind of welcome one would expect for a team that had just been crowned continental champions, with only the wall of Urawa fans behind the goal making concerted efforts to lift their team.

Those efforts began to diminish as soon as Shimizu S-Pulse began to take the upper hand. Indeed, the Urawa fans seemed to spend more time jeering opposition players who happened to be in possession of the ball, than they did cheering on their own team. It didn't help that one of Urawa's best players, Keita Suzuki, had to be substituted after just seventeen minutes, nor did it help that Washington was suspended, while Nobuhisa Yamada, Tatsuya Tanaka and Shinji Ono were all injured. Yet for a club that is so quick to trumpet its depth, and one that so eagerly proclaims its fans to be the best in Japan - Urawa were being out-played both on and off the pitch, as every hoofed long ball forward from ex-Hertha Berlin defender Fabio Nene brought ironic cheers from the Shimizu fans.

The match ultimately ended in a 0-0 draw - the second time I've seen a scoreless draw at Saitama Stadium this season, after Urawa's cynical 0-0 draw with Sydney FC in the AFC Champions League. Both teams had chances; Marcus Tulio Tanaka going agonisingly wide with a header in the opening stages, while Ryota Tsuzuki pulled off a miraculous stop after Fernandinho found himself one-on-one with the Urawa shot-stopper in the last minute of play.

Urawa now go on to face second-placed Kashima Antlers in what is a clash of the titans at Saitama Stadium next weekend. For me, I went straight back on to the bus. Any notion that perhaps the vast majority of Urawa fans really do come from the city of Saitama were dispelled by the bumper-to-bumper traffic that clogged the highway all the way through the megalopolis that is Tokyo, and out on to the Tomei Expressway that winds down the Pacific coastline. The bright lights of the big city were blurred by my tired eyes - I had a headache, and I was hungry. But after one of the biggest days on the Shimizu S-Pulse fan calendar ended in somewhat of an anti-climax, there's no doubt that given the chance, I would do it all again.