The 2002 World Cup came a bit too early for me to be able to afford to
head out to the other side of the planet to watch football (something I did
last summer, watching Villa play in Hong Kong), as well as the fact I had the
small matter of taking exams at the end of my first year at Newcastle
University.
I had gone to Beppu for the onsen, but after a couple of days of that,
I was a little onsened-out and needed another form of entertainment. Oita is a
city that was a short train ride away, so I thought I would go and explore it. But
‘what is in Oita?’ I hear you ask. Not much by all accounts, though it was one
of the ten, count them, host cities for Japan’s half of the World Cup. I thus
decided to go and have a look at the formerly-named ‘Big Eye Stadium’.
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| Oita 'Big Eye' Stadium |
A confusing walk from the tiny Takio train station, I eventually found
it in an out-of-town sports park – like the majority of the stadia. You can see
where it originally got its name from, with arches reaching across from one
side to the other around the dome-shaped arena, though it is now called the Oita
Bank Dome. There were a few bits of memorabilia around to commemorate the World
Cup (didn’t exactly see any classics), though the stadium seemed little-used
other than the odd Oita Trinita J-League match, which is a shame, as I quite
liked it.
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| Oita 'Big Eye' Stadium |
Despite having one of the cleanest train stations I have ever seen, it
seemed a strange choice as a host city, other, much larger cities, not getting
the nod, but I looked into the other host cities and found that many of them
would be stops on my trip. It was then I decided that I would set myself the
pointless task of visiting as many of the ten stadia as possible.
Hanshin was the next stop on this magical mystery tour, as I stayed in
Kobe for some easy access to the Kobe Wing Stadium (now the Homes Stadium) in
Kobe and Nagai Stadium in Osaka. First Kobe, where a long walk saw me arrive on
a day when Inac Kobe, essentially the Japanese women’s national team, were
playing an early kick-off. The ground seems to have changed a little since the
World Cup, though they do seem to favour moving roofs and morphing stands here,
so could have simply been down to the day I arrived. It’s not exactly a great
stadium, but is big enough and seems to get its fair share of use out of the
men’s and women’s Kobe teams.
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| Kobe Wing Stadium |
The Nagai Stadium in Osaka looks a little grander in pictures from the
air than in the concrete. A bland, round, concrete affair that seems to have
little variety as you walk round it. There were a fair few kids practising
appalling dance routines and practicing sports all around it, and two smaller
stadiums sit either side of it, which seems a little unnecessary. Occasionally
used by Cerezo Osaka, this seems more of a general events venue now, though is
definitely one of the more easily accessible stadiums, being relatively central
in the city. It was also the site of that depressing England-Nigeria 0-0 that I
got up at 5:30 to watch.
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| Nagai Stadium, Osaka |
Next was Sendai and the (Mr.) Miyagi Stadium. Again, one that looks
better from the air, but isn’t too bad from ground-level either, though it
seems to be greatly under construction at the moment and not being used. What
was quite a nice area around the stadium is also a bit worse for wear and could
do with a bit of work again as well. Not currently used by Vegalta Sendai, who
suffered their own problems during the tsunami last year, and stuck a little
away from the city centre, it seems a bit of a forgotten stadium.
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| Miyagi Stadium, Sendai |
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| Miyagi Stadium, Sendai |
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| Sapporo Dome |
I walked round and decided to take the stadium tour, though this is
much more one for baseball fans, Japanese-speaking baseball fans. But the use
of some sort of hoover system to move the football pitch in is impressive and the
sort of novelty you expect from a stadium built for the World Cup. Silly and
unnecessary, the Sapporo Dome is certainly unique, and for that reason alone is
one of the better stadiums used a decade ago.
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| Sapporo Dome |
I could see the Niigata Stadium, or the ‘Big Swan’ Stadium, from my
hotel room, and it looked good from above and in the distance. Sat by a lake, I
thought this would be a good one to view, though on seeing the lake, I was less
sure. The park the stadium sits in is well maintained and seems a site for
summer barbecues, even if it is raining, with quite a few people around on a
non-match day. The roof is the attraction here, but is only properly visible
from above; from the ground, it’s just another concrete circle. The lake it
sits next to has seen better days and so doesn’t make for any great views from
the opposite side. But lest we forget, this is where Emile Heskey scored his
World Cup goal, and for that it is now an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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| Niigata 'Big Swan' Stadium |
Back in Tokyo, I made easy trips out to Saitama for the Saitama 2002
Stadium and Yokohama for the Nissan Stadium. With Tokyo not actually having a
World Cup stadium, these were the next best thing, and as such are much larger
than the others. Saitama is home to the Urawa Reds, who get some of the better
attendances in the J-League and is the most used by the national team. Again
sat in a sports park on the edge of a city, it’s not too much of a journey from
Tokyo, provided you get off at the right station, and is one still regularly
used. There seemed to be much more of a ‘getting things ready for games’
attitude around the ground, with two teams with big fan bases the focus of much
attention around the place.
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| Saitama 2002 Stadium |
And finally, the Nissan Stadium – not called that then of course. Home
of the final, this is the largest stadium out of the twenty used in Japan and
South Korea, and while not the most unique, is definitely the one that feels
most like a football stadium from the ones I visited. You sense they were
trying to recreate a large European stadium with this one, feeling like it
could sit in Italy or Spain. Though probably way larger than they need, the F.
Marinos call it home, and it’s again a not too bad journey from Japan’s largest
city to its second.
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| Nissan Stadium, Yokohama |
With the exception of the Nagai Stadium and the Nissan Stadium, all
twenty were complete in 2001 in time for the World Cup Finals. With the
J-League taking off since then, the local sides have tended to make them home
and so get some sort of regular use, though Sendai and Oita – either not being
used or by a Division 2 side – seem more a place of memories than anything
else.
I decided against trips to the last two stadiums in Shizuoka and
Ibaraki, because who goes to Shizuoka or Ibaraki?! The Shizuoka Stadium Ecopa
is a large one and a regular of the national side, while the Kashima Stadium in
Ibaraki is the smallest used in the Finals. That meant a completion score of
80%: a distinction if it were a University degree; that was the dream ten years
ago at the end of the first year anyway. My results of my first year were
approximately half that…maybe I did watch too much football…
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