A venue record-breaking crowd of 63,551 turned out to watch the Blue Samurai dismantle their opponents with goals to Keisuke Honda, Ryoichi Maeda and Shinji Okazaki.

The result piles the pressure on Oman to open their account with a home win against the Socceroos in Muscat on Friday.

“The importance of winning the first match, the players were very well aware of that and so the match went exactly as I had expected,” Japan coach Alberto Zaccheroni told the official AFC website.

“Before the match some of the players were a little bit too nervous. We took the initiative, or we wanted to do that, but Oman tried to defend.

“They did not give up many goals in the third round of qualifying so they were very defensive and to break through that we needed to have our own game plan and we kept to that goal.

“The good thing about the team was that we were very offensive, especially down the flanks. There was a lot of space in behind the defence and we were able to exploit that.”

The Asian Cup holders next host Jordan on Friday before setting up a mouth-watering showdown with the Socceroos in Brisbane on June 12.

Oman coach Paul Le Guen was philosophical following the match pointing to the way Al-Ahmar (The Red) bounced back from a loss to Australia in the previous round to defeat the Socceroos at home.

“There is a huge difference between the level of the teams and that’s why we lost, but after losing to Australia in Australia we said that too and we came back and qualified,” Le Guen said.

“The result is not a huge surprise when you analyse the quality of their players. They are used to playing in big games and we are not.

“We are not used to the intensity and that’s why it’s hard for them, you have to get used to it and you can’t do miracles.

“I’m disappointed but I’m not so surprised. We have to close the gap to such a team. We are far behind. We have to try and get better. Tonight it was not enough and there was a big difference.”