Choosing Your Team

Guidlines on choosing a Japanese team to support

If you haven't done so already, you may want to choose a team so I'll run through some of the options. If you have already decided you can skip this chapter.

Who is your local team?

I'm assuming for now that you are living in Japan or planning a visit where you'll take in several games.

If you are living in Japan and support your local team, it is a good opportunity to make friends who live locally, you can see the team play regularly at their home stadium and visit their training ground without travelling. It's a good way to become proud of where you live and learn more about the local culture.

Hometown

Every team has an official "hometown". This may not exactly correspond to the team's name or stadium location i.e. Gamba Osaka's hometown is Suita City, Osaka whereas Cerezo Osaka is based in Sakai City, Osaka. Yokohama F. Marinos' hometown is Yokohama City, neighbouring Yokosuka City and Yamato City. FC Tokyo's hometown activities are mainly based around the stadium in Chofu rather than in central Tokyo.

The team's hometown is prominently displayed on the player's shirt sleeves. In the hometown, you can see posters for the team in the local shops, nearby stations and in the streets. Large shopping areas are often decorated with the team’s flags attached to the lampposts and there are often team branded vending machines to be found in the street near the stadium.

In some densely populated areas, you'll have a choice of several nearby teams but if you are located in a more remote area there may only be one logical choice. But hey, since when have football fans ever made logical choices?

If you are not sure about who is your local team. Take a look at the Wikipedia entries for the J-League divisions and check the current list of teams for each division. The home town for each team is listed there.

A home away from home

If you live in or around Tokyo and choose a Kansai or Kyushu team then you'll still be able to see several matches nearby when they play away games in and around the Tokyo area. The same goes if you live in Kansai, your Kanto based team will come to the area several times in the year.

For example, if you live in or around Tokyo and support a team from outside the region may be able to see your team at local away matches for quite a lot of the season as they travel to Urawa, Kashiwa, Kashima, Kawasaki, Yokohama and Shonan. Shimizu and Iwata are also not so far away on the Shinkansen from Yokohama or Tokyo.

You could of course go the whole hog and follow a faraway team around the country. I have met several Japanese supporters who live far away from their team's hometown who unbelievably travel every weekend to see their team wherever they are playing home and away - dedication in the extreme. Some of them moved away from the hometown area and other supporters just chose a team that they liked or the team that their favourite player plays for.

J1 or not J1 That is the question

But what if you find that your nearest team is not in J1, the top division? Give it a try. Lower division teams often have even more fanatical supporters, better stadium food and a more adventurous and eclectic selection of away locations. It is not unknown for J3 teams to make it up to J1 within a couple of seasons or for J1 to slip and linger in J2 for what seems an eternity to their fans.

What really matters is how much fun you have following the team that you choose and to some extent how much money you are going invest, or blow, in following your team.

Or the player?

I have met various Japanese fans over the years who don't support a team but support a particular player that they like. This goes as far as attending home, away and training matches for his team when he is playing and then when he leaves for another club fully changing allegiance to his new club. This could be on the borderline of obsession or even stalking and there are rumours of relationships breaking up when a player left a team and partners suddenly find they support different teams. So if you do support a club because you like a player think about what will happen if he moves on.

Following from afar

If you plan to follow from overseas then the location of the club doesn't really matter. It's easier getting information, especially in English about J1 and J2 clubs than J3 so this may factor into your choice.

It might be worth checking out exactly where your team's s home ground is before you get too attached to them as you may one day you may want to visit them. Some teams, even J1 teams, are in pretty remote locations and would require a significant detour to reach if you were just passing through Tokyo on the way to somewhere else and may require an overnight trip if the match you want to see during your is not played early in the day.

This is not to detract against remotely located clubs, but it is best to be aware before you travel to Japan exactly where they are located.

Getting to know your team

A good way to catch up about the history and culture of J-League teams is to read their Wikipedia page. Depending on the club, the length and quality may vary. If you feel that you already know more about the club, or that the information is outdated, then why not take up the role of maintaining that page on WIkipedia.

Another way is to find out when a fan of that club has been on the JTalk Podcast and listen to the episodes that they appeared in. There are often a lot of references to club history and trivia mentioned in the course of the discussion.

Many clubs have a fan run Twitter account that posts up translations of club tweets and news. See the J-League Resources Appendix for details.

The most comprehensive information is in Japanese. Trying to figure out the club announcements is a good way to practise Japanese reading skills and good motivation to learn more Japanese. In many cases, announcements follow a pattern so once you have learnt the basic vocabulary you will be able to read similar announcements when they come up in future. Japanese sports writing will really test your abilities as a translator as it is nuanced and sometimes poetic.