TOKYO -- Japan's soccer team is under a security curfew ahead of Saturday's exhibition game at World Cup host South Africa.

Japan's players have been instructed not to leave their hotel after dark while they are in South Africa for the match in Port Elizabeth.

"The players are free to go to the beach in front of the hotel, but we've told them not to go out after dark," Ichirota Fukushi, the team's media relations director, told The Associated Press via telephone from South Africa.

South Africa's murder rate - one of the world's highest - has dropped slightly, but the country faces a distressing rise in rapes, robberies and hijackings, according to South African police figures released in September.

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