When working out how to schedule our recent holiday to Japan, everyone in my family got to put their hands up and say what they wanted to do while we were there. Predictably, with two teenage kids, that meant a lot of theme parks and shopping. When it came time for me, though, I only had one request: we go to a J-League game.
I've long been super into the concept of football tourism. It's a very local sport in a way, sure, one defined by suburbs and neighbourhoods and inter-city rivalries, but as the internet has expanded our knowledge and interest in other teams and leagues, it's also become a global sport. I've found there are few better ways to visit a city than to take in its culture at its rawest and most emotive, with the added benefit that no two matchday experiences are the same, even within the same city, let alone different continents, so every game is something new.
I've seen games featuring clubs and countries from all over the place. I was there (on my 18th birthday, as a guest of a friend who was a season ticket-holder) when Chelsea booked their ticket to the 1998 Cup Winner's Cup semi finals, a match I remember as much for the sheer wall of noise coming from the stands as for the songs sung on the tube on the way there and back. I was there when Australia broke a decades-long curse and qualified for the 2006 World Cup, when at the final whistle the man next to me, tears in his eyes, pressed a smooth river stone into my hands, told me it was his lucky rock, and begged me to keep it. I was there when David Beckham played his last game for England, on a night when the national side's fans were so bored there were more paper planes thrown from the stands than there were goals scored.
Yet one of my most memorable nights of football came in the year 2000 when, as part of the Sydney Olympics, Japan played Slovakia in my home town of Canberra, and I thought why not, I'll go check it out. What I saw (and heard) that night blew my mind. There were 15500 people in the stands on a freezing night, and it felt like 15490 of them were travelling Japanese fans, the only exceptions being myself, some friends and what looked like a handful of the Slovakian embassy staff tucked away down on a touchline. The travelling Japanese supporters had drums, they had flags, they had trumpets and they could sing, relentlessly and in unison, for the entire 90 minutes over the course of Japan’s 2-1 win. It remains one of the coolest fucking things I have ever heard in my life.
After that night I'd always wanted to go to see another Japanese game, but every time I was in Tokyo for TGS I was either too busy or the nearby team's schedules didn't line up, so I always ended up missing out. This time, though, I was going to make it. Knowing I was landing in April 2026, a few weeks before we left I checked the schedules of every Tokyo club and hit the jackpot: Yokohama Marinos, a team I'd casually supported for 20 years (both because they were the first J-League shirt I'd ever bought as a souvenir in Japan and because a succession of Australian managers and players have graced the club over the years), were playing at home right in the middle of my time in Tokyo.
After a quick consultation with my family to make sure nobody really didn't want to go, I was able to buy four tickets online while still in Australia, check that the train schedule from our apartment in Minami-Azabu to Yokohama was somewhat doable (turns out it was a pretty straightforward, albeit long trip!) and dig my old Marinos shirt out from the depths of my collection.
When finally the day came, I spent the whole train ride feeling a weird kind of butterfly in my stomach. It wasn't fear about the result, since this wasn't really my team. This was a game that didn't really matter, because it was part of an interim season taking place because Japan's league was in the middle of shifting which time of year the competition was held. And it wasn't any kind of worry about admission or finding the place, since by being on a train full of supporters we knew we were already part of the matchday crowd, and could just follow them to the stadium. It was only when I described the feeling to my wife that she was able to correctly diagnose that I wasn't nervous, I was excited.
The approach to Nissan stadium--mildly famous as the only stadium to have ever hosted three different types of world football final--was a completely new footballing experience for me. There were no flares, no singing, no groups of drunk men and no security screening. There was just a huge crowd of fans marching in a very quiet, polite and orderly fashion, which meant the act of getting from the train to our seats was easily the quickest and most painless matchday approach I've ever had.
Once we got there the good stuff kept coming. A collection of food trucks parked at both the east and west entrances were selling the most delicious football food I've ever had--J-League cuisine is a regular star of Footy Scran posts for a reason--and the snacks found inside the stadium included stuff I'd never even dreamed of seeing at a football game, like snowcones topped with...strawberries and cream.
When it came time for kickoff, holy shit. I had vivid memories of the crowd at the Olympics being passionate, but what I saw and heard at even this meaningless J-League game blew that away. The two sets of duelling fans--the Marinos fans at one end, opponents Kawasaki Frontale at the other--took turns going to war, giant banners waving in the sun for the whole afternoon, both factions alternating for the entire 90 minutes between chants, songs and more complex musical routines involving everything from drums to stomping.
Kawasaki Frontale's visiting fans put on a show
I was in my own footballing heaven, and that's before I even considered the football itself! Which was excellent, but also didn't really matter! I was so blown away by the overall experience that the fact the Marinos lost 1-0 in the dying seconds meant very little, to me or the home crowd, because it looked like even the most die-hard fans, embracing the fact there wasn't really a J-League season this year, were just there to party in the autumn sunshine. As was I, and I left the stadium extra-chuffed at having added a new Marinos jacket from the club shop to my collection, the staff laughing at their luck for finally having sold the only 4XL they had in stock (which, I'll have you know, is simply an XL in Western sizing).
The local Marinos supporters were also incredible
Topping the day off was the fact that, having gone all the way out to Yokohama for a 1:30pm kickoff, we decided to stick around and visit the city's famous and quite lovely waterfront, check out a few signature locations from the Yakuza series and have dinner in one of the biggest Chinatowns I've ever seen. I honestly think, having got to not only do all that shit but do it with my family, who all had a blast (even my daughter!), it's one of the most memorable days I've ever had.
All of which is me saying: no matter where you're travelling, whether it's Japan or Europe or South America, there are few better ways to spend a day or night than getting yourself to a football match. You can go into them with some tickets and a ride on public transport (2026 World Cup excepted), and walk out with one of the best times of your life.
