With J.League less than 2 weeks away, I figure it’s about time to make public (or at least official) what I hope to be this site’s big initiative for the 2010 season.

On Sunday evening, I attended a meeting at EL LOCO in Tokyo. This meeting didn’t produce any answers (nor was that its intention), but was instead meant to ask an important question:

Where do Tokyo’s supporters go from here?

With the 3rd-highest attendance in J1 (nearly 26,000 per game in 2009, trailing Niigata and Urawa), top-tier finishes in the last two years, and a recent championship that was one of the fastest sellouts in recent memory. Yet, when 26,000 attend each Tokyo home game, over 20,000 seats are still empty in the cavernous Ajinomoto Stadium.

The unfortunate reality is that a capital team in a capital city has to compete with… a lot of other things in the capital. In Tokyo’s case there are are two professional baseball teams, hundreds of livehouses, clubs, and bars (any one of them running an event on a particular night), movie theaters, and some minor-league pissant soccer club that wears green uniforms. There are any number of reasons as to why those 20,000 seats are empty, the question is what can be done to fill them.

I’ve been supporting Tokyo for nearly 3 years now and recently received my fourth SOCIO pin in the mail; the team is responsible for a lot of friendships I have made and incredible experiences I have had since I came to Japan. I made this site on a dare from users over at The Rising Sun, it’s now taken on a mission to spread news of FC Tokyo to English-speaking fans both in the city and around the world. Supporting the team has been a life-altering experience and I’ve always encouraged my friends and colleagues to join me behind the goal. I believe that while we have yet to take part in international competition, Tokyo has the potential to be a world-class club team and more supporters outside of Japan should be paying attention to what we’re up to.

To that end, beginning near the end of last season I started considering how I could start to do this on a greater scale. The obvious answer was, much like the S-Pulse UK Ultras or the now-defunct (?) MOIST, to start a supporter’s group aimed towards non-Japanese supporters, especially those who might not consider supporting a Japanese team when they have a team back home cheer for.

But of course, that would be way too exclusive; and would defeat the purpose of a supporter’s group: to have fun, to make friends, and to share in victory and defeat together. So, in the spirit of Tokyo’s international community, obviously an international supporter’s group was called for.

Therefore, after consulting with several friends and supporters on both sides of the pacific, my previously-stated goal of having an internationally-oriented supporter’s group will move forward under the name TOKYO DAMACY 1999. I’ve applied for and received penya status from the club; we’re #74.

For now, the goal is to start gathering regularly at the stadium or after matches and then hopefully move towards more proactive support (away trips, making flags/banners, you name it).

I’ve written up FAQs in both English and Japanese, those can be found here (or on the TOKYO DAMACY 1999 tab now included in the top navigation):

TOKYO DAMACY 1999 FAQ – English

TOKYO DAMACY 1999 FAQ – 日本語

My idea for what I hope this penya to become is included in these FAQs, so hopefully once you read it you’ll understand the possibility of what we can accomplish (and will want to join in on the fun!)

To start with, our first official gathering will take place on March 6th, after the Yokohama match. The location will probably be Kenny’s Irish Pub in Chofu, just because it’s so close to the stadium and will probably have enough room for all of us (whether we’re 5 or 15). If you’re interested in attending, leave a comment or drop me an email at tokyodamacy1999@aishiteru-tokyo.com. Exact details (including times and directions) will be posted here in the near future.

I’m not quite sure how big this will become, but I know how big it can become and how big supporters I’ve talked to believe it will become. I hope to meet their expectations.

The new navigation bar is divided into 4 sections:

-HOME brings you back to the front page. I never took the time to set it up until now! Sorry bout that.

-FC Tokyo Culture will focus on everything that takes place in the stands and off the field

-Team Info will house information on players and staff as well as basic team information and other need-to-know things

-Supporter Guides are all about how to watch the game in whatever fashion you feel is appropriate: whether at the stadium, in the pub, or on your TV/computer at home.

-TOKYO DAMACY 1999 is… well, that will be announced within a few days

I also finally wrote out the page on Pro-FCT bars and pubs in Tokyo, which can now be accessed from the Supporter Guides tab. I’ve written out info on three locations so far, feel free to post a comment if you have suggestions for more bars I should include!

Long story short: I’ve been upgrading themes and adding some new/nifty features for this season and I broke something.  It will be fixed momentarily (and by “momentarily” I mean “when I get back from work tomorrow”), so don’t panic! That’s my job.

Edit (11:30PM) I fixed the column issue, the header ugliness can wait till tomorrow evening.

I haven’t been able to put as much time as I’d like towards updating the site over the winter break, but I’m still posting odds and ends on Twitter via @aishiterutokyo so if you’re a Twitter user feel free to follow!

It seems like the team officially starts activities on the 24th, which generally means a press conference with the new players (and hopefully a sponsor announcement, and a foreign striker, and ponies and rocket cars for all).

For now, news in brief:

Schedule News

-The team will have training camp in Miyazaki Prefecture this year rather than spending a million dollars going to Guam.

-Preseason Match: 2/27 at home vs. Albirex Niigata. Not quite as exotic as vs. Consadole Sapporo in Okinawa last year but hey.

-Season Opener: 3/6 at home vs. Yokohama F. Marinos. This will be the second time the two squads have met on opening day; the first was 10 years ago as FC Tokyo won its first J1 match 1-0 on a late goal by Tuto.

-Week 2: 3/13 away at Urawa Reds.  Again. Yippee. Given how much tickets go for I should just buy up as many as I can and make a profit.

Player Transfers

In: Morishige, Matsushita, and a bunch of kids from the youth squad

Out: Asari (retired), Fujiyama (to Consadole Sapporo), Kondo (to Consadole Sapporo), Bruno (unknown), Sahara (will return to Kawasaki Frontale), Moniwa (to Cerezo Osaka)

Rumors: A few still festering but nothing’s gained any traction beyond a day or two. As of right now the squad only has three experienced forwards (Akamine, Hirayama, and Suzuki) on the roster, plus I think one or two of the youth members.

NT News

-Hirayama is the new hero of Samurai Blue after scoring a hat trick to help a team of fresh faces come from behind in Yemen earlier this month.  He, along with Ishikawa, Tokunaga, Nagatomo, and Konno will be on the squad for Japan’s match against Venezuela on 2/2.

-Depending on call-ups, these 5 players may be with the NT up through March 3rd, giving Jofuku difficult circumstances under which to plan his lineup.

I’ve written about 102 posts in 2009, compared to about 30 posts in 2008.  Granted, the bulk of those posts were certainly earlier in the season before I got a bit overwhelmed with work and the like, but I’m certainly happy with how I managed (mostly) to keep up with things.  I’m nowhere close to what Furtho & Agent Orange are up to over in Omiya (300+ posts this year alone!), and sometimes I have trouble consistently getting up reports as regularly as Barry over in Shimizu, but for a two-bit operation I don’t think I (or my guest writers/assistants, Lantis and Andre) have done that badly considering that this was basically the first “full year” of operations for the blog.

The site currently receives a couple thousand visitors a month; plus a fair number of RSS feed reads.  Although to be totally honest I have no idea how many of those hits are actual people since people rarely write comments =P (Seriously, people, comment! Let me know what’s up!)  Additionally, @aishiterutokyo on Twitter has about 50 followers, the vast majority of them Japanese fans.

In 2009 I attended 28 games; 20 league, 7 Nabisco Cup, 1 Emperor’s Cup. 7 of these matches were away, including 3 stadiums I’d never visited previously (Hitachi, Kashima, and Nihondaira) plus my first J1 match at Saitama Stadium.  In addition the Nabisco Cup group stage match against Shimizu brought me to Komazawa Stadium for the first time.  Schedule conflicts prevented me from attending 3 home games (including Ishikawa’s hat trick vs. Omiya, the tie vs. Kyoto, and the Nabisco semifinal vs. Shimizu), and while I may be forced to miss a game or three next Spring due to similar conflicts I intend to make it up in my away matches.  With the help of Andre I managed to complete the tifo I’d been mulling all season; the three 8.5-feet-tall nobori we created ended up in many a photo after the Nabisco Cup.

This was also an important year for me in that I started to establish connections within the supporter community.  I met Yuji, the webmaster behind Tokyo Web Life (pretty much the authoritative FC Tokyo fan site).  For the first time in my three years (!) of supporting the team, I finally made an effort to befriend the members of LA12, the main group of ultras that organize tifos and lead chants.  I’ve criticized LA12 in the past, and I’ve always felt that they were somewhat resistant to the idea of me being behind the goal, but after a few of them saw my blog this year they finally started to understand that I’m not some tourist and there’s now somewhat of a mutual respect.

I’ve also continued to improve my knowledge of ‘the game’ itself; this is part of overcoming a disability known in the soccer world as “being American.”  But I’ve learned enough to be able to tell when a player is diving, when offside is really offside, and when Tokyo will utterly fail against a set play (sadly, the answer to this is ‘nearly every time’).

With that in mind, I’ve already got a laundry list of things I want to do for next season.

• Add More (Japanese) Writers. While Lantis (hopefully) and Andre (probably) will continue to contribute next season, my grand plan is to assemble two or three Japanese writers with good enough English skills to handle translating articles.
• Better SNS & Multimedia integration.  Anyone who’s been following @aishiterutokyo on Twitter knows that it’s been really easy for me to post brief notes as well as live updates from matches.  I’ve experimented a little with the Lifestream plugin for WordPress this year, but for next year I’m hoping to find a better method.  The same goes for YouTube videos and photos.
• Visit More Practices.  This is unfortunately tied to my work schedule, but I would like to make the trip out to Kodaira more often and talk to the players.
• More Collaboration with Supporter Groups.  I’m not sure what form this will take but hopefully it will go towards getting more foreign fans to stand with us behind the goal; I’m planning on doing romaji versions of the ‘song sheets’ that fans can pick up at The Shack on gameday.  Furthermore, the idea of doing a joint scarf or tee-shirt design has been floating around.  I consider scarves to be quintessential supporter gear and have a couple design ideas percolating.
• Flesh out the site a bit more.  The long-waiting “How To Buy Tickets At Lawsons” section, maybe a bit more for history and statistics, that sort of thing.
• Form A Penya.  FC Tokyo recognizes groups of supporters as penya – you don’t get anything from the team except for acknowledgment that you exist, but it’s still Something.  My intention is to submit for an International Supporters Penya under the TOKYO DAMACY 1999 slogan.  Hopefully if we get more foreign supporters behind the goal, we can actually do stuff as a group… we’ll see how it turns out!

Is there anything I’ve overlooked?  Let me know!  The comment section is there for a reason

In any case it’s already shaping up to be an exciting 2010 for FC Tokyo and Aishiteru-Tokyo.com, so I hope you’ll all continue to stop by this blog!  Thanks to everyone for your support and I hope you have a good offseason.  In the meantime I’ve got photos to choose for my exhibition in 10 days, but early next week I’ll be doing a rundown of Tokyo’s signings and releases.

Should FC Tokyo reach the quarterfinals or higher, Nabisco Cup games will be given the same treatment as league matches with complete previews, reports, and related coverage.

Meet the Players 2009 – Goalkeepers

Meet the Players 2009 – Defenders

Meet the Players 2009 – Midfielders

Meet the Players 2009 – Forwards

In site news if you’re visiting this site the old-fashioned way instead of reading the RSS feed you may notice that we’ve updated our layout!  Free from the tyranny of two columns, Aishiteru Tokyo can now present info on *both* sides of the main article!  Truly this is only the beginning of a revolution.  Some stuff isn’t quite the way I want it to be (you’ll notice the lack of a ‘Home’ button anywhere for some strange reason.  I’m hoping to fix up navigation and get content a bit more organized, so stay tuned!

Tomorrow, our first Match Preview of 2009!

In any case, the regular season is over.  In line with predictions I made early on in the season on the RSN forums, FC Tokyo did make the top 6 – in fact, the team ended in 6th place, when it could have reached as high as 4th were it not for a tragic fall-from-ahead loss at Chiba to end the season.  JEF Chiba’s shock win saved the team from relegation, meaning that we’ve been the dramatic foil for relegation-threatened teams for two years in a row now.  Which, I’ll be honest, is kinda amusing in a “if I didn’t laugh I’d be crying” way.  Hell, I’m from Philadelphia, who knows more about abject futility than us?

A week earlier, the final home game of the year was held at Ajinomoto Stadium; a match against Albirex Niigata that ended with an exhilerating goal as time was running out.  In stark contrast to 2007′s home finale, which resembled the atmosphere of a funeral, this year’s home finale had a palpable sense of celebration attached.  Manager Hiroshi Jofuku has gotten FCT to play almost at its full potential, and with the nucleus of the team largely expected to return next season, the eyes of the J.League world will undoubtedly be on Ajinomoto Stadium.  Though the team has some weaknesses it needs to overcome, nobody can dispute that FC Tokyo will be a contender for the championship in 2009.

What needs to change? That depends on what aspects of the squad you choose to look at.  By virtue of its solid youth program, FCT doesn’t need transfers as desperately as other teams in the league, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t needed.  The most perplexing issue is at forward – should Cabore have another foreign strongman – either South American or European – to give him some relief and help the team in the opposing goal area, where they seem to get caught up frequently?  Akamine, despite taking half as many shots as Cabore, was FCT’s leading goal-scorer of the year and one of the top 2 or 3 Japanese goal-scorers this season.  The odd man out seems to be Sota Hirayama, who showed flashes of brilliance this season but has yet to show enough consistency to earn a regular starting role.

One lineup change that will be affecting all squads is the addition of a forth foreign player slot – while teams were previously limited to having 3 foreign players on their roster, the fourth has to come from an ACL country.  Most teams will probably go to Korea, which has sent its fair share of players to Japan, or to Australia, which seems to have one of the best performances aside from Japanese teams in the ACL.

In any case, the season is not over yet – this Saturday (the 20th) FCT plays Shimizu S-Pulse for the billionth (actually 5th) time this year up in Sendai in an Emperors Cup quarterfinal match.  The team hasn’t had very good luck against Shimizu (0-1-3 this year), but with the fourth and final ACL bid still up for grabs, one would be foolish to take anything for granted.  Amazing J indeed.

In player news, Yuto Nagatomo has been nominated as both Outstanding Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year by J.League, honors well-deserved.  Here’s hoping he takes some silverware home!

In other site news, I’ve been asked by Gora over at JapaneseSoccer.net, an English-language J.League news blog that’s now in beta, to write a special piece about the deteriorating situation at Tokyo Verdy.  For those of you who haven’t been following, Verdy has not only been demoted to J2 but their supporters are now declaring open rebellion on the board of directors.  This includes urging a season ticket boycott, an act virtually unheard of in Japan.  Part 1 of my essay is up now, with parts 2 and 3 to follow.  I assume by the time anyone reads this Gora will have the formatting fixed, so stay tuned.

Should FC Tokyo win the series, they’ll take on the winners of the JEF Chiba vs. Nagoya Grampus series in the semifinals in early September (3rd and 9th).  On the other side of the bracket, Shimizu takes on Kashiwa and Gamba fights it out with Yokohama FM, with the winners of those respective series facing off against each other in the semifinals.  The winners of the semifinal matches will challenge for the hardware at Kokuritsu on November First. In my opinion, Tokyo can easily reach the finals, but if they listened to my opinion they wouldn’t bother playing the matches, would they.

In other news, things are quiet in Gastown.  FCT travels to South Korea this weekend for a friendly against FC Seoul before J.League Division 1 resumes.  Unfortunately, my game schedule will be interrupted by the only thing that can affect it – my family coming to visit me.  We’re all going to Osaka to spend 10 days in Kansai, so I will not be at the following matches:

6/29 vs. JEF United Chiba (J1 R14) – I highly suggest fans attend the day if you can, last year TOMAS gave away free muffler towels on their sponsor day.
7/2 vs. Oita Trinita (Nabisco Cup Quarterfinal)
7/5 at Urawa Reds (J1 R15) – Even if I *could* go to this game I’m not sure if I’d want to.
7/13 at Kashiwa Antlers (J1 R16) – I’ll actually be back in Tokyo on the 7th but photography commitments prevent me from making the trip out to Deer Island.

This is hella 申し訳ない especially since I have no reason *not* to attend any of these matches, but when family comes calling what can you do?

My next game will be the home match on 7/16 vs. Gamba Osaka – yes, that’s right, FC Tokyo takes on Urawa, Kashiwa, and Gamba within an 11 day span.  Maybe I can ditch my family on the 5th and at least find a sports bar in Osaka that would broadcast the Reds game, especially since Gamba doesn’t play on the 5th… if anyone reading this has any suggestions for places to go in Osaka, by all means lemme know,

In site news, my exams are more or less over so I’m going to start updating some stuff, including the supporter song section, as well as the page on attending FC Tokyo matches now that I know where all of my screenshots of the Loppi machine are.  I’m also going to try to figure out a system where I can order+ship FC Tokyo swag for any fans/collectors who might be interested in such a thing.  Good times, good times.

Oh, and I pulled a ticket to the National Team’s match against Bahrain on the 22nd, so that should be fun!  I’m not sure what the policies are viz. bringing cameras into the stadium but I’ll do my best to maybe post some pics and video if I can.

Sometime during that period I registered this domain name (aishiteru-tokyo.com) with the intent of turning t into a full-fledged English fansite for the team, complete with a Joomla install, all sorts of subpages, full multimedia capabilities, the whole deal. Then I realized that I would never have time to keep and maintain such a page, and thus it languished as a ‘Coming Soon’ image.

Then, while sitting at home today, nursing my bad ankles following last night’s triumph “at” Tokyo Verdy, I decided to raise some hell and mock the Verdy fans over at the Rising Sun New’s forums. I was subsequently outed as the first Gasmen to show up on those forums and challenged by one whom I suppose I should call my esteemed colleague (in the same way that, in politics, ‘my esteemed colleague’ is used as a gentler way of saying ‘that bastard on the other side of the aisle’) to come up with a blog to report on FC Tokyo’s comings and goings in English, as such a site is lacking. I’m now convinced that this is his revenge for my attempt to troll the Verdy fans by forcing me to grind up what little free time I have into smaller fines to divide them ever further.

But I digress.

I have decided to take up this challenge, and to the best of my abilities I will report on the Blue and Red and its triumphs and tribulations throughout this season and as many more as I can follow.  A little about me:

-I’m an American (sorry about that, by the way) living in Nakano-ku, Tokyo, currently studying Japanese at a language school.

-Like most Americans, I played soccer in my youth.  Unlike most Americans I also enjoy watching it, but because the MLS never made it to Philadelphia while I lived in the states my loyalties remained unattached until I relocated to Tokyo.  That said I obviously wasn’t raised on Premiere League so my technical knowledge of the game may be below par.  If you don’t like it, write a better FC Tokyo blog   Additionally I will call it football or soccer depending on the context.

-I sit behind the goal, 95% of the time in the section run by supporter group LA12.  I am usually the only foreigner there unless I’ve brought friends.

-I have a fixation on supporter culture bordering on unhealthy, primarily because American pro sports (American football, baseball, basketball, hockey) don’t have supporters in the way that football does.  The chants, iconography, signs, and history are all incredibly fascinating to me and if I’m not familiar with a team I can more often than not gauge them based on their supporters.

Ideally I’d like to get other writers to help come up with reports, particularly when I can’t get to games or to help translate articles that I might otherwise not get to.  In the meantime, let’s see how this goes.