Yep, you heard (err read) that right: Last Saturday I went to the "Kobe Wing Stadium" (built for the World Cup) with some people to watch the play of the official club of the city, Vissel Kobe versus the Yokohama FC. To say it straight away: Vissel Kobe isn't very good. The do play in the premier league of Japan (J League 1) but they're only 12th of 18 and even that is their best position in years. Well, anyway, we were in the stadium last saturday, which has a decent size with 42.000 seats, whereas it's more or less conceived as a pure footbal stadium (no running tracks etc.).
The founding year of the club is 1994, which isn't astonishing since most of Japans professional clubs evolved only in the 90s, die J-league itself was founded in 1991. Before that, the clubs were in fact company teams, which fought it out in amateur leagues. Vissel, for example, was the Kawasaki Steel Soccer Club from 1966 to 1994.
You can read the rest on Wikipedia but now back to the game.
The stadium was well-staffed (because of the achievements this season as well), except for, of course, the quarter for the away fans. Many people watch the game calmly without supporting their team vocally (maybe because of the Japanese reservation) save the spectators in the so-called "Supporter"-quarter, these are the real fans (of course we were sitting in this part).
Vissel beat Yokohama 3:0 and without the Yokohama-goalie it would have probably been 5:0 or 6:0, he was Yokohama best man on the field.
But I'm straightforward with you: Watching the game nearly physically hurt. Both teams really showed such bad football that even our (edit: Austrian) league often looks better. Particularly the typical problem of Japanese football was put into focus: No one wants to shoot! Instead of someone giving it a go at the box the just pass the ball and try to score by moving the ball in the goal so to speak. Supposedly this is connected to the attitude that the team is everything and no one wants to steal the glory from another player or harm the team with a blown shot. The national team has gotten better in this respect thanks to different foreign trainers but you can still identify the tendency of "passing to much" clearly.
Here are some videos from the stadium
Notice the flags with "certain" combinations in colour and form and with the iron cross.
(At home you'd probably be faster put on trial than you can say "Wiederbetätigung"; reenactment)
Even so, football is not much present in Japan in comparison to baseball. In summer I went to a game of the Hanshin Tigers, which wasn't a peculiar important one too, but the game had much more fans and a far greater charged atmosphere. See for yourself:
Interesting (and funny) facts/opinions about Japan:
At home, computer games still count as childrens toys for the most part und adult gamers are often considered to be a little bit immature. Here people are already beyond that: There are campaigns targeted at adult gamers and persons beyond 30 don't think of themselves to be too good for computer games.
For example: Yesterday a business woman (estimated age: 33) sat next to me on the Portliner (the train bound for the island in the bay where I live) played with a Nintendo DS Lite (kind of a Gameboy but much more evolved) and the other passengers didn't acknowledge her with weird looks. Of course she had the sound switched off to be consistent with politeness.
Maybe I should move here permanently?
In addition: the Playstation 3 for (converted) 350 euro instead of 600 like at home?
