Yet whilst there are two football teams in Yokohama, 'Tokyo' has only two teams of its own as in with the word 'Tokyo' mentioned.  With that amount of people living, breathing and working in the area getting around is easy but it is also tiring.  The people need the outlet of sport as another string to the Japanese obssession with 'beating stress'.   If you are unsure why take one journey on a metro trip in central Tokyo and the amount of people fast asleep on the train, briefcase in hand will tell you something about the pace of everyday life.  Its fast, frenetic and busy and even when you are a foreigner on holiday its hard not to get caught up in it all.    Your usual trip to Barbados can feel a million miles away.

Football in Japan is no different to everyday life in Tokyo.     There is modernity and order yet traditional and historical contradictions almost everywhere you look.  One minute you will see a flag being raised written in Chinese characters and the next it was be a flag in Portuguese or 'Spanglish'. Some team names go along the simplified traditional F.C or United route whilst others will be in part Portuguese.    Its fast, slick, professional and polished on the field but strangely without much heading or aggressive tackles.   Then just as respect seems the order of the day a player lunges into a knee high tackle and is sent off the field by the once non-existent diminutive sized referee.   As he trudges disconsolately off the field his team mates will be arguing with the referee but the man red carded will be bowing apologetically to the fans in the stand.

Each game in Japan sees a multitude of official and unofficial fan clubs and social groupings that crowd the terraces to carefully choreographed chants and displays that ring out for ninety minutes.   This in itself indicates a desire to copy what occurs in Europe at say a Bundesliga or Serie A match but it's not just in football that this sort of support occurs.    J. League football fans have arguably borrowed as heavily from baseball fans as they have from European and South American football culture. Chants at Baseball games will also involve carefully choreographed chants and team colours wearing.    

Indeed the passion for baseball surpasses that for football in many cities. In Hiroshima almost every shop in the city had fan merchandise pertaining to the Hiroshima Carp baseball team and this ranged from large merchandise such as shirts and baseball bats to smaller products like stickers and city transport passes.     Against this it was very hard to find anywhere selling Sanfrecce Hiroshima goods out with a small official club shop not 5 minutes from the Atom bomb site.    On J-League match day in Hiroshima it was hard to even know a game was occurring at the Big Arch stadium against this the Friday night baseball game between Hanshin Tigers and Hiroshima Carp saw thousands of colourful and noisy baseball fans dominate the city scape.     In the United Kingdom it is very hard to find a top level cricket match occurring at Old Trafford starting at the same time as a game involving Manchester United at Old Trafford.    However in Tokyo a baseball match was occurring at the same time in the stadium next door to the national stadium where FC Tokyo played JEF United.

At the current time Urawa Reds seem to be the Manchester United type club of Japan.    That does not mean though that they have everything there own way.    Just as Manchester United have Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal for competition at home so Urawa have clubs like Yokohama Marinos and Kashima Antlers in the J-League.     With Japanese football fans acknowledging the support as the best in Asia, Urawa have attracted supporters from both Tokyo and from the north stretching all the way to Sapporo in Hokkaido.    The similarity with Man Utd is further enhanced as the club has grown and attracted' these new-fans with the move to its own Theatre of Dreams at the Saitama Stadium 20 minutes from Urawa and used at the 2002 World Cup for the Brazil against Turkey game.

Where once the game in Japan had been an amateur dominated sport with corporate backing on a small scale today the Japan Professional Football League or J. League is the top professional soccer league in Japan.     It is also one of the most successful leagues in Asian club football far ahead of a similar structure in South Korea.     Its teams regularly compete in the World Club cup against the likes of Manchester United, AC Milan and Sydney FC.     The esteem in which it is held is further enhanced as it is the the only league given top class ranking by FIFA.     Currently the J. League Divisions 1 and 2 are the first and second levels of the system and these have been around generally since 1992 but that is not to say football was not been around before then.

Before the inception of the J. League, the highest level of club football was the Japan Soccer League (JSL) but as mentioned it consisted only of amateur clubs.   Fans were about but the grounds were not of the highest quality and the Japanese national team was not on a par with the European powerhouses.   Japan had its overseas exports and had made a name internationally at the Olympics games but qualification for the world cup was both hard and near impossible.   To raise the level of play required domestically and in an attempt to gather more fans, improve the national team and compete with the traditionally dominant spectator sports of baseball and Sumo the J-league came about.

In the early years many famous and post-peak foreign players were brought into the clubs to promote the game at grass roots level.    Gary Linekar being one of the most notable figures who came to play for Nagoya Grampus Eight. Despite the success in the first three years the early boom of large television exposure, corporate sponsorship and fan interest soon weakened with the fading of the Japanese economy and the league grew financial problems as the clubs continued paying high wages to often non performing foreign players.     J. League clubs were also heavily corporate-owned or related and they depended heavily on support from sponsors for transfers and income.    Essentially organisations such as Nissan act much like de facto parent companies to clubs such as Yokohama F.Marinos and were partly responsible for merger.    

A sea change of some sort came with the awarding of the 2002 World Cup finals to Japan and South Korea but that alone was not the sole reason as to why the game thrives as it is today. Fans of the game were always around but the new stadia generated by World Cup 2002 saw crowds increase as capacities needed filled.    A short look around the league teams today and its obvious big name foreign players are no longer the norm.   The league still has an assortment of Brazilians but many of these are of average standard. Some also go onto become naturalised Japanese and play for the national team. Instead each team may have a token foreign player from Europe or South Korea but these will be heavily outnumbered by young Japanese players who have grown up through youth systems that may have collapsed had financial outlays to foreign stars continued.     Curiously as stadiums went from being inner city and underdeveloped to being located outside the city or modern so a healthier financial status and relationship with fans has grown.    Although many clubs have origins going back to 1920's the absence of historical emotionalism with a club's original home or success is not really an issue for many clubs fans and hence moves to a new ground and mergers are often, all though not always, embraced.      Fans of clubs have went from being home-town only prefecture based to fans commuting from miles away for each home match.   FC Tokyo games often take place in the very central National Stadium but most games are in Chofu City at the Ajinomoto Stadium some one hour from the centre.    

In recent years, with incremental club outlays on marketing and a year on year investment in club/fan relations has seen the identification of the J-League club as one 'encompassing many' or as a 'seat of community'.    Each club will have jargon inspired club mottos which conveniently embrace both club and fan concerns thereby surpassing any need for use of historical imagery or past victory to promote and engage.    For almost every team past success either domestically or internationally does not exist and therefore modern slogan and empty marketing driven inspired slogan is what ties many fans to clubs. Sanfrecce Hiroshima use 'We Fight Together'; Shimizu S-Pulse use “We Believe”; Kyoto Sanga use 'We Get Dreams' whilst Yokohama F.Marinos use the the Babel fish-inspired English type marketing slogan 'EGV: Enjoy Growing Victory. '    The list goes on and on from the relevant to the ridiculous but it all seems to work.

Outwith this slogan use team names and colours themselves point not only to home city of origin but also unity or group unification.    Kyoto Sanga FC use the word "Sanga" in the team name and it is said to be a Sanskrit term meaning spiritual grouping.    Meanwhile the team themselves play in purple this being used to reflect the proud imperial history of Kyoto.    The use of 'Sanfrecce' in Hiroshima's team name points at arrows being used for the 'good of a clan' or family.    Some team names meanwhile will be used as a means of pointing at the historical traditions of the city the team is located.    The new team of Yokohama F.Marinos came about as a result of a Nissan backed merger.    Whilst Yokohama 'Flugals' had pointed towards the backing of this club by airlines the new team name made no reference to Nissan. Instead, Flugals merged into the new team in 1999 and the team name F.Marinos used by Yokohama means 'sailors' hinting at the rich naval heritage of the port city.

Similarly, supporter groups also adorn themselves with some inspired European influenced translations, slogans or symbols.   However, many clubs fanswill also use traditional Japanese imagery and combine this with these European type slogans.    At a home game of Kyoto Sanga you are likely to see a flag with image of a Geisha girl combined with 'Ultras Kyoto' emblazoned underneath.   The city of Kyoto is said to be as un-sporting friendly as you can get.    Rich in traditional Japanese culture such as tea houses and temples it is as far away from a typical grimy hard working Japanese city as you can get.     Even at the club shop in the city centre a staff team member was unsure of club fixtures and whether match tickets would be available.       Step inside the home Nishikyogoku Stadium on match day and things seem different.     A fanclub “Real Naked” is visible; so called as a group of men who support the team go in bare chests.   In the home end Kyoto fans bounce up and down from start to finish even when the team is losing and you do wonder if the boundaries between defeat and winning have been blurred somewhere.

Japanese society in all its contradictions is not an easy one to explain but why the J-League is today the success it is can perhaps be explained by the fact that Japan remains a group-oriented, orderly and cohesive society which is largely free of the ethnic deviciveness present in major European nations. For football fans supporting a J. League club is never really a hit-and-miss affair.  Almost every game no matter the importance sees singing, celebration and songs. Fans celebrate goals the same whether they are 3-0 down or 3-0 ahead.   Commonly songs are out of tune and out of sync with what is occuring on the field and engagment can seem miles away.   Originality is also hard to come by outwith maybe Urawa Reds.    Also, almost every clubs fans sing the same songs to the same theme tune and act in the same way.     All that seems to differ is the amount of fans and the team name.    Inside the grounds the J-League merchandise on sale seems to have been mass produced and appears copyright of the J-league and the clubs.    The only originality comes by way of fan flags on display inside the ground.

If you are a foreigner (gaijin) in Japan its fairly easy to get into any game you want even without booking ahead. The J-League in general is not foreigner friendly in terms of match reports or club websites but it's very easy to buy tickets and source fixtures.     Moreover, once locals find out that you are interested in a local team the welcome can be astonishing with hand shakes and 'pleased to meet you' a plenty.    Directions to grounds and match locations from fellow fans or information points will be on the spot and detailed with alternatives, potential transport problems and short cuts all pointed out as well.    Some newer grounds such as that at JEF United hold only around 24,000 and will sell out for a Saturday evening game.    But the options for purchasing tickets are high tech and numerous meaning that in general they are not too hard to come by even if you need to book ahead.

At one of the larger clubs meanwhile you can turn up on the day and purchase a ticket for 2,500 yen quite easily.   At FC Tokyo tickets for a Saturday evening match were available on a sliding scale of between 2,000 and 6,500 yen and tickets at the lower end of the scale amongst home supporters were easily come by not 10 minutes before kick off.     Similar purchase opportunities occurred at the Nissan Stadium in Yokohama.     Turnstiles are also non-existent for supporters meaning the queues seldom exist. Indeed there is very little need for such a method in Japan anyway.    Whilst here in the UK barging, pushing and shoving is the order of the day outside a ground queuing in an orderly and pleasant fashion is the norm no matter what is occurring inside in Japan.

Programmes are similar to those on sale in Europe football and will be available at around 300 yen (£2.20).    But whilst the cover will be all in English the interiors will be solely in Japanese meaning that it will remain a memento rather than a piece of actual reading material. Match-day line-ups will often be announced in English and a rousing rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is belted out before kick-off at FC Tokyo games.   Other clubs offer a nod to Japan’s sizeable Brazilian community – arguably the largest minority group in what is practically a ethnically homogeneous society – with the use of Portuguese in chants and team songs.

Just like the MLS or the A-League in Australia the image of the J. League as a mere “retirement home” for ageing European stars is an enduring but totally false point of view.     Like its counterparts in the USA and Australia the J-League has matured into a legitimate, sustainable competition where fan/club relations are healthy, trusting, encouraged and binding.   A hectic European type match day atmosphere is more often that not visible but its not the Olympico in Rome.

Nevertheless the forces of modernity, globalisation and media will invariably continue to thrust the J. League just like Japan as a nation into a wider global context.  There are no football fans in Japan walking around with J-League or Tokyo team shirts on a non-match day but there are a great many walking around with England shirts with Lampard on the back.     However,  Japan's cultural traditions will ensure that the league will remain sustainable, healthy, cohesive and continuous for the good of both fans, clubs and the wider Asia football system.  Despite the often distorting thrusts of modern football being visable and moving faster than ever the J-League will survive and progress.

Living space is hard to come by in Tokyo but the wider J-League does seem to have got its house in order.