Japan's World Cup preparations suffered a blow as the co-hosts went down 3-0 to Norway in a friendly in Oslo on Tuesday.
All three goals came in 12 second-half minutes as strikes from Henning Berg, Sigurd Rushfeldt and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer wrapped up a comfortable victory at Ullevaal stadium.
Norway dominated throughout the 90 minutes to give Japan coach Philippe Troussier plenty of food for thought before the Frenchman names his 23-man squad on Friday.
"It was a very poor team performance. We battled hard but made a number of individual errors," said Troussier.