Most sport and exercise programs in Japan are being offered at the following four settings: 1) schools, 2) workplaces, 3) private sport clubs, and 4)community sport clubs.　SfA campaigns and programs have recently become more organized in community settings.　The sport facility per head in Japan is not inferior to those of the advanced countries.　However, sport facilities in Japan are restricted to the limited variety of sport and to the physical training facilities of schools which occupy a large share of sport facilities and are not completely open to the public.　This problem could be solved by maintaining the facilities deliberately open so that the needs of the users may be fulfilled to the maximum extent, allowing effective facility management.

　MEXT has surveyed the current number of the physical training and sport facilities every five years since 1969.　According to the 1996 survey; the number of the sport and physical education facilities of primary, junior high and high schools are 152,083, while there are 8,531 facilities in universities and colleges.　The number of other categories is as follows: public sport facility is 65,528, private facility is 19,147, workplace facility is 12,737, totaling 258,026.

　Sport in Japan have traditionally developed mainly around school settings. In view of the significance of exercise and sport, physical education at schools plays a major role in health promotion for the students in accordance with the social changes and the current state of the levels of physical fitness and motor performance.　So far the educational programs have been reviewed for improvement every 10 years or so.　Through these reviews, the range of electives of exercise areas and sports types has been expanded (MEXT, 1998).　With the recent decline in the number of students, some schools have become unable to support extra-curricular sport clubs.　This trend is expected to increase in the future.　In some cases, several schools have combined activities and many are calling for the authorization of participation of multi-school teams in inter-school sport events,

　The urban cities in our country function as political, business and industry centers, and the daytime population is extremely large, compared with the nighttime population.　The land price in the center of the metropolitan cities has become very expensive.　As a consequence, the living environmental condition has become worse and forced residents to move out of cities.　In urban areas, some private companies have prepared sport and fitness facilities for the sake of the welfare of their employees, utilizing one floor of the office buildings while other companies have prepared welfare facilities with accommodation in the suburbs.　According to the survey by MEXT in 1996, the number of sport facilities of the private companies amount to 12,737 in Japan, making about 50% of all the sport facilities.　Popular facilities are tennis court 27%, ball park 13% and gymnasium 11%.

　Active participation by the employees in various physical activities has been one of the issues of the company management.　Thus, large companies have been promoting fitness programs and providing facilities and qualified staff for employees.

　With the background of the high rate of Japan's economic growth, and the rising interest of the nation after the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, private sport clubs started their business by offering the exercise programs with the aim of improvement of health and prevention of illness due to the lack of exercise.　According to the national survey on the service industries by METI (1998), there were 1,548 private sport clubs excluding swimming-specific clubs in Japan and their annual sales volume was 294.5 billion yen with the numbers of employees, 51,250.　About 70% of the facilities have swimming pool, training gym and fitness studio.

　Since schools play a central role in sport activities in Japan, the opportunities to continue a regular participation into sport decrease sharply for people once they graduated.　Some companies have their own sports clubs, but these clubs are often only for top athletes, and even if there are sport clubs, they may be inadequate in meeting all the employees' needs for sport.　If it is possible to stimulate sport activities in the community, it would be easier for people to continue enjoying sports even after leaving schools and entering the workforce.　For that reason, community sport clubs play a significant role in Japan's SfA promotion.

　In recent years, both facilities and instructors have been gradually improved in urban and sub-urban communities to meet local needs.　According to the investigation of MEXT in 1996, the kinds and numbers of the public sport facilities are as follows; gymnasium 9,206, multi-purpose field 9,127, ball park 7,943.　The increase rate in numbers during 6 years (1990-1996) is as follows; indoor swimming pool about 2.1 times, ball park increased about 1.6 times, outdoor tennis court increased about 1.4 times, exclusive ball playing field about 1.4 times.

　There are other types of facility; health resort facility of the National Pension, welfare facilities of the Welfare Pension, overall sport facility of workers, the young workers home, family's travel village and family's camping village as semi-public sport facility.

　These facilities are used to hold athletic events including the space for spectators and they can be expanded as multi-purpose area with the combination of facilities of shower, bath, restaurant, convenience store, ticket vender and sport information center.

　Fitness and sport classes such as exercise, dance, and various types of sport activities are being offered at community centers, available for middle and senior aged people.　Local programs of sport competitions such as tennis, volleyball, soccer, jogging and other promotional events are also popular in many communities.　A well-known example of community sport clubs is Junior Sports Clubs Associations.　At present, associations number some 34,000 nationwide and 800,000 elementary school students, approximately 11% of the total students population, belong to them and 16% of these associations provide multiple sport, but most have just one sport type.　Among lower and upper secondary school students, the number who belong to these associations drops sharply as many join their schools' extra-curricular sport clubs.

　Other community sport club have the same characteristics as youth sport organizations.　Community sport clubs today are generally for limited age groups and sport-specific, such as volleyball for housewives also known as Mama-san (mothers) volleyball in adult community sport clubs.　According to a survey conducted by the Japan Sports Club Association in 1999, 94.6% of community sport clubs is a sport-specific club.　The survey also reveals that most of these are small, averaging 28 members.　In this way, community sport clubs in Japan are generally small in size, and sport-specific type.　In light of these current issues, MEXT has been operating 115 model projects for the development of Comprehensive Community Sports Clubs since 1995 (MEXT, 2001).

　In the year of 2000, the subsidiary project for encouraging Comprehensive Community Sports Clubs in all of 47 prefectures in Japan is started.　Also by 2010, Sports Center Covering a Wide Area is to be built for each prefecture.