16 Mar 2006(Thu)

March 14, 2006: There are times in Japan when you really appreciate how much football has become part of the sporting and social fabric.

Saturday was one of them.

It was Reds against Jubilo at Saitama Stadium 2002: a rising force of Japanese football against a fading force, and it was an occasion too good to miss.

The sun was shining, spring was in the air, and a spring was in the step of the Urawa masses as they headed for the ground.

On the trains it was chaos, but an enjoyable kind of chaos. There was red everywhere, and a feeling of excitement all around among the generations of fans crammed into the carriages and packed on the staircases of the stations.

The journey from Omiya Station to Urawa Misono is never straight-forward, with two changes necessary, but on this day it was much longer due to the slow pace of the fans.

So when you emerged into the open air at Urawa Misono, and the silver outline of the stadium was beckoning in the distance, like a gleaming space ship waiting to take off, you could finally walk at a brisk pace. Past the kiosks selling a wide range of replica shirts, and the stalls offering a wide range of pre-match snacks.

Being English, the donner kebab stands made me feel right at home, but the queues were too big and the service too slow to entice me to join them and risk delaying the journey even more.

Arriving at the stadium, the plaza was packed with families having a picnic in the sunshine. Mitsubishi had taken the opportunity to display a new model, and the park and grassy banks on the far side were full of kids playing football.

Yes, this was the true world of football -- and not a hint of any crowd trouble, despite the rivalry between the two teams. (Japanese readers may wonder why I have pointed out this fact, but don't forget I grew up in England in the Seventies, when the threat of violence hung over every game, from the moment you walked out of the train station or bus station to the moment you got off at your stop on the way home again! Police sirens, dogs barking, shouting in the distance, people running and causing others to panic...were they running toward trouble or away from it? You never knew.)

So still, after all these years, the atmosphere in Japan is alien to me, and special. Positive, refreshing, friendly.

As I walked round the stadium toward the Media Accreditation desk, the Jubilo fans in the "away" corner started chanting "Yoshikatsu" as, presumably, Kawaguchi and his fellow keepers emerged for their pre-match routine. The Reds fans whistled and jeered in reply...great stuff!

As kick-off approached, the stadium was a magnificent spectacle, bathed in sunshine, covered in red except for a sky blue line of Jubilo faithful, and over 56,000 fans to see the game.

This is what Saturday afternoons are all about.

ends