Ryan Kuwabara is the captain of Japan's national ice hockey team currently playing at the Pool A World Championships in Germany. Kuwabara, a Japanese-Canadian who was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens and now stars for Japan Ice Hockey League champion Kokudo, has agreed to keep a journal chronicling some of the team's experiences while in Germany.

Our second game of the tournament was against the Finns. We knew coming into the game that they were a great skating and passing team so we had to play well defensively and try to score on our chances when we got them, because there might not be that many.

We were a little tired after playing Slovakia the night before, but once we got to the rink everyone seemed to be ready to give their all. After warmups, we all headed back to the dressing room for a short meeting before we went back out for the start of the game.

Dave King, who was one of our coaches in the Olympics and is now the head coach of the Columbus NHL team, gave us a talk about how commitment, hard work and good team play can make our team just as good as the more talented Finns. This seemed to get our guys going as some guys shouted out "gambare masu."

The first period didn't quite start out as we wanted, with the Finns getting a goal about three minutes into the period.

After that, things started to get more physical as we tried to get something going. Chris Yule got hit into the boards and shaved the skin off the top of his lip, so he had to get it bandaged up before going back out (not a pretty cut either).

We got a couple of chances but couldn't put the puck in the net, while the Finns got two more to end the period up 3-0.

The rest of the game was kind of much of the same, with Finland controlling the puck most of the time and us getting some more chances, but not being able to score as we lost 8-0. Frustrating, to say the least.

Everyone worked hard but we couldn't break down their defense to get really good scoring chances. The Finns are a good team and they do a lot of things very well, which you would expect from one of the top six teams in the world. It was was good for our team to play a team like that to see what we need to do to get better.

Our big game in our pool is our next game against Austria [on May 2]. They are the team we beat in the Olympics in Nagano. We always play well against them as we are quite evenly matched. They are in the same boat as us -- we both have two losses with the winner of this game going on to the medal round robin (our goal for this tournament).

We are going to play our hearts out and bring home the win. Wish us luck!