The sports stadium or arena in Japan that I’ve visited most frequently is not actually Hitachi-dai (the home of my Japanese football team Kashiwa Reysol)! Neither is it Ajinomoto Field Nishigaoka; the closest stadium to the Tokyo Fox Global Operations Centre. It’s also not Prince Chichibu Memorial Rugby Ground which hosts many top tier rugby matches. Instead it is the home of tennis in Tokyo.

The terribly-named Ariake Coliseum tennis arena in Koto-ku is a place I’ve been this year for the Billie Jean King Cup, the Davis Cup and the Kinoshita Open. Just because I’d attended those tournaments, it didn’t mean I was going to neglect making my annual appearance at the Toray Pan Pacific Open (TPPO). This time, the plan was to go three times!!

As usual, four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka was the one that I most wanted to see and taking the first two days off work to see her play would guarantee seeing her in action. I did likewise two years ago and got to see her for a few minutes before her opponent retired! Things didn’t get better this time as she pulled out of the tournament the day before qualifying with a back injury which wasn’t too much of a surprise I guess as she had already withdrawn from a tournament in Osaka the week before. More on her later!

In a dream world I was hoping for appearances from Osaka and other favourites of mine like Italian Jasmine Paolini or Chinese girls Qinwen Zheng and Xinyu Wang. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway!) that I would love to have seen British players like Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter and Harriet Dart too. Sadly, the tournament became rather decimated by so many top players pulling out like Jessica Pagula, Emma Navarro, Danielle Collins, Barbora Krejcikova, Donna Vekic, Elise Mertens and so on.

The TPPO starts properly on a Monday each year but there are a couple of qualification days the weekend before. Having enjoyed one of these days so much 12 months ago, I decided to attend again this year. Entrance was even free for the Sunday although you did still need to get a ticket in advance.

It’s only taken about 20 years to know how much one of those huge tennis balls cost! For some reason, I had just never looked at the price before, and they were more expensive than I anticipated! 3500 yen is $23!

When it comes to Japanese female players, Osaka naturally makes all the headlines but one of the highest ranked players in the country is actually Mai Hontama who I did see (along with Osaka) represent Japan in the Billie Jean King Cup against Kazakhstan back in March. Hontama was the first match on center court in an all-Japanese affair.

Even in Japan, I’m not sure if she’s too well known outside of the more hardcore tennis fan community.

The beauty of this day was that you could (legitimately!) sit anywhere you want which gave me a rare chance to see the action up real close on a scorching hot Sunday in late October.

The action was sizzling too and an entertaining and fiercely fought contest against fellow Japanese player Ayano Shimizu saw Hontama eventually edge it 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. As nice as it was to get one of Jack Draper’s match balls at the men’s equivalent of this tournament the previous month, I wasn’t too bothered about aquiring a new one when Hontama knocked one quite close to me!

After that match I went to see a talk session with Aussie player Ajla Tomljanovic and Varvara Gacheva of France being interviewed by Misaki Doi; a former Japanese player that retired about a year ago.

I can’t say I was too aware of these players but it was still nice to listen to their interviews.

That was then followed directly by a signing event with Xinyu Wang of China. I would have loved to be involved but at some point realised that it was a ticket event. I later found out that to get such a ticket you had to spend 1500 yen in the store on merchandise to be entered into a draw or something like that.

Still, I did get to see her from just a few metres away but was a little envious of those who got to meet her!

This qualifying day is about more than just the tennis with other things going on around the action on the courts such as the food and merchandise stalls, autograph sessions, pickle ball pracice and so on. I had promised my wife I would only be out for 4-5 hours so had to leave mid-afternoon but not until I’d seen bit of one of the matches on the other court.

At home that evening I checked the Instagram page for the TPPO and was surprised to see that Naomi Osaka had made a guest appearance later that afternoon and posed for selfies and signed autographs for many of the fans. If only I’d hung around on the centre court for a bit longer! Gutted!

The opening day’s schedule didn’t excite me too much so I didn’t bother attending but I did return to Ariake for the evening session on the second day.

Seeing my fellow Leicester compatriot Katie Boulter was something I really wanted to experience but first the crowd had to sit through Mika Stojsavljevic against Moyuka Uchijima.

Typically though, the quick match I was hoping and praying for turned into an epic and really couldn’t have lasted much longer than it did!

Mr Toray Pan Pacific Open himself!!

Rain stopping play for about 40 minutes certainly didn’t help with the timing, although it was quite interesting to see how the staff dried out the court with a load of towels!

With a name like Mika Stojsavljevic, I naturally just assumed she was from an eastern Europe nation but the following day I actually discovered that she was British. I felt a little bad as I would’ve given her a bit more support had I known! Hopefully, I can rectify that next year! She had some match points but eventually lost to her Japanese opponent 4-6, 7-6, 6-7.

That was enough for many people and the already-sparse crowd dwindled even more by the time Katie Boulter and Australia’s Priscilla Hon finally began the following match just before 9:00 pm.

Thankfully at that late hour of night, Boulter was in no mood to be messing around and blitzed her way to a 6-1 first set win inside 30 minutes. The second set was much closely contested but Boulter eventually won it 6-4. Game, set and match at just after 10:15 pm! Time to go home to bed but not before I’d congratulated the match winner in person.

The match-winning shot!

On the way home I was alerted by a friend that the TV cameras had picked me out a few times at the conclusion of the match, and so the following morning I found the video of the live feed and skipped through to the final point and then saw myself dropping my flag as I left my seat to head down to the courtside area. How embarrassing!

It was great to end my TPPO experience on such a high but the bar has now been set quite high for next time. When you’ve met a few players or whatever, there is the hope and slight expectation that the same will happen again, and I’m worried I might no longer be satisfied by simply seeing just the tennis action. Lets see what happens in 2025!

Click here to read ‘I Met Britain’s No. 1 Female Tennis Player In Tokyo’

Click here to read ‘Two Tennis Tournaments In Tokyo Serve Up Mixed Fortunes For Me!’

Click here to read ‘Naomi Osaka Is The Star Attraction In Tokyo As Japan Compete In The World Cup Of Tennis’

Click here to read ‘A Brit Finally Plays At Tokyo’s Top Tennis Tournament & I Got To Meet Her!’

Click here to read ‘I Finally Got To See Naomi Osaka Play Tennis But It Didn’t Quite Go To Plan!!’