June 17th　

●Problems Getting Tickets

The problems with obtaining tickets to matches are well known in Japan, but this problem is not just limited to Japan. At every game city, the station, city center, and around the stadium are jammed with fans in uniforms looking for tickets. There is a bit of a difference depending on the card, but the going rate for one ticket to a popular match is FF3,000, about *75,000.

The word has gotten around that there are particularly many buyers for Japan's games and that Japanese will pay top price, so scalpers are taking the opportunity to sell at extraordinary prices, over FF5,000 or about *125,000. There are even unscrupulous brokers who are buying tickets to Japan's games as cheap as they can, then selling them to Japanese as high as possible.