Errors by the two American men cost them leading positions. U.S. champion Evan Lysacek two-footed his quad toeloop and was in third, while Johnny Weir fell on a triple axel to be in fourth.

"I'm happy I got through it," Lysacek said. "Maybe it's not perfect now, but I'm not aiming to be perfect. I always like to go for the higher difficulty."

Weir was looking ahead to Saturday.

"Falling on the triple axel was just silly. I was trying too hard and I went too high," the 23-year-old said. "I'll have the long program tomorrow to improve myself."

Takahashi, silver medalist at the World Championships, had the crowd clapping along to his short program, delivering the required elements cleanly but without a quadruple jump in his combination.

He scored a season-best 84.20, edging Olympic silver medalist Lambiel, who delivered a clean quadruple toe-triple toe combination in a short program that also earned him a season-best, 83.80.

"I really felt the spirit of the Olympics in this building, and it gave me so much energy and all of this made me jump like never before," Lambiel said.

In the ice dance, U.S. champions Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto won the original dance segment with their best score of the season.

The Americans, who finished second at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, earned a 63.64 with a lively American hoedown — beating their previous best score this season of 60.80.

"We're very happy with our original dance. We've done a lot of work on the first section to try to make it more exciting, more energetic, start it off on the right foot," Agosto said.

Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France came second with a Brittany country dance, scoring 63.29, with Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin dancing a Cossack routine with 62.31.