Toyama Athletic Stadium

The running track is the first thing you notice from the stand — the pitch sits inside a synthetic all-weather oval, which gives Kataller Toyama's home a shape closer to an athletics venue than a football ground. It was built as the athletics stadium of the Toyama Prefecture Comprehensive Sports Park, and it has kept that name since it opened; there has been no sponsor, no rebranding.

Two years after the stadium opened, Ecuador played Scotland here in a friendly. Three years after that, in 1998, Kyoto Purple Sanga met JEF United Ichihara in a J.League fixture. Only later did it become a regular home, and the fixtures that fill the calendar now are J3 League matches and Emperor's Cup rounds.

The building has one architect's name attached to it, Koichi Sone of the Environment Design Institute, and the work was split between three contractors — Sato Kogyo, Takano Construction and Sugimoto Construction — before it was handed over in the autumn. A round of renovation followed in 2000, and it is from that point that the counting of seats becomes untidy. The natural grass measures 106 by 70 metres, and the wide bowl around it is what a visiting away end has to fill.