TAMPA, Fla. -- Tokyo is the only city in Japan that has hosted the American Bowl, seeing the NFL's preseason game a world-high 10 times. Now the NFL is likely to be heading to Osaka in 2002.

"We're exploring a game potentially in Osaka in 2002," Douglas Quinn, senior vice president and managing director of NFL International, told The Japan Times on Thursday.

Since launching the first American Bowl in 1989, the Tokyo Dome hosted the preseason game every season from 1989-96. Since 1997, the American Bowl has been held every two years in Tokyo.