The most common sports in Japan include baseball, football (soccer) and other ball sports. Some of the martial arts, such as Judo, Kendo and Karate are also practiced by many people. There is no legally official sport of Japan, but professional sumo association describes themselves as the national sport of Japan.

There are opportunities to play various sports for all age, and school plays an important role in community. Kindergarten and lower elementary school students can play in a private sport club that can be joined for a moderate fee. Most martial arts can be started as little as 4 or 5 years old. When a student starts 5th grade, school offers free after-school activities for its students to participate. Middle and high schools also encourage their students to join school sport clubs.

There are 239,660 facilities for various sport activities in Japan. 62.2% of these facilities were built for under secondary education, 3.8% are university's and college's facilities, 23.6% are public facilities, 3.5% are built by private companies for their employees and 7.0% are other uses.

Baseball
Baseball is probably the most popular sport in Japan. Yakyu, as baseball is called in Japanese, was introduced from the United States during the early Meiji Period. There are two professional baseball leagues in Japan: the Central League and the Pacific League. They consist of six teams each.

Sumo
Sumo is a Japanese style of wrestling and Japan's national sport. It originated in ancient times as a performance to entertain the Shinto gods. Many rituals with religious background are still followed today. The basic rules of sumo are simple: The wrestler who either first touches...

Soccer
The J-League is the professional soccer league of Japan, which debuted in 1993. Since 1999, it has been consisting of two divisions, J1 and J2. Amateur soccer leagues had existed in Japan long before 1993, but the J-League caused soccer to gain much popularity.

Aikido
Aikido originated from Aiki jujutsu, founded by Minamoto Yoshimitsu in the twelfth century. The aikido as we know it today was developed by Ueshiba Morihei in the 1920's. This form of martial arts emphasizes self defense and is often considered to be a spiritual exercise.

Judo
Judo is a graceful Japanese martial art of grappling, throwing and falling. It trains and disciplines the body and mind. Most of these techniques involve grabbing the Gi or uniform of the opponent. Unlike Jiu Jitsu, Judo does not intensify on the ground and involve full contact wrestling.

Karate
In karate one is defending him/herself with fists, elbows and feet. Karate is related to the Chinese Kung-fu and the Korean Taekwondo. Karate-do means "the way of the empty hand" since usually no weapons is used. Two basic kinds of traditional karate performances are...

Kendo
Kendo is Japanese fencing. It means "the way of the sword". Swords used to be a main weapon in Japanese warfare for many centuries. They continued to be the symbol of the samurai into the 19th century.

Skiing
Japan offers several world classes skiing and snowboarding resorts with abundant, high quality snow, beautiful scenery and relaxing hot springs. The country has staged the winter olympic games twice in the last 40 years. There are over 500 ski resorts across Japan...

Mountaineering and hiking
Until the turn of the century few Japanese would have considered climbing one of their often sacred mountains for anything other than religious reasons. These days, prime highland beauty spots such as Kamikochi are widely popular with day hikers and serious mountaineers...

Beaches, surfing and diving
As Japan is an archipelago, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it is blessed with some pleasant beaches. The truth is that industrialization has blighted much of the coastline and that many of the decent beaches are covered with litter and/or polluted.