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.

NUREMBERG, Germany -- We just finished our game against Norway, which I will get to later, but first a little recap of the previous game we had against Austria that ended in a 3-2 loss for us.

Everyone on our team coming into that game knew we would have a good game.

You could just feel the electricity in the dressing room, during warmups, and at the start of the game. We came out flying and we got a goal just 15 seconds into the game by Chris Yule.

Chris, incidentally, had come down with a case of the chicken pox so he has been in and out of the hospital and just prior to the game he was in there getting an I.V.

Like I said, everyone knew what was on the line and if anyone was hurt they just played through the pain.

Anyway, they ended up tying it late in the first. The next period they got a couple more but we ended up getting one back with a minute left in the period by Taro Nihei.

In the third period it was tough for either team to get anything going so that's how it ended up, 3-2.

For us, it was a heart-breaker because we gave everything we had and expected to get the win. For me, it was tough to digest because I know what a win here would mean to our team, our fellow-Japan League players, and all our fans back in Japan.

With that game done, we looked to our next game against Norway. We had a day off after the Austrian game to recharge our batteries and focus on our next three games.

On our day off, we all went as a team to a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant here in Nuremberg and everyone enjoyed having a taste of Japan after a week-and-a-half of German food.

We had played Norway in last year's tournament in Russia and lost 9-0 so we wanted to get some revenge!

Our pregame meeting set the tone for how we would play this game. Our coach, Steve Tsujiura, came in and asked everyone to dedicate this game to some people you care a great deal about. As it went around the room, the theme of everybody's comments was that we wanted to play for each other and everyone that had helped us get there. It was a very emotional time as different guys expressed how honored they were to represent Japan and how we have come together as a team. The tone was set and after that meeting. Nobody needed to say anything else to get us ready. We were all here playing for each other and Japan.

In the first period, we scored the first goal of the game on a power play by Ryan Fujita. I then crunched some guy after that and sent him off to get some stitches. We then got another goal on a breakaway from Yasunori Iwata.

They got one late on a power play so we went into the start of the second period up 2-1. The start of the second saw both teams play well with us getting a goal on the power play by Shin Yahata to go up 3-1.

After that, things got a little crazy with the ref giving them power play after power play and on a couple of occasions we were down to three skaters.

I'm not much for talking a lot to the ref, but it was getting ridiculous. Norway was able to capitalize once and the period ended 3-2.

The third brought more penalties for us. I can't say how frustrating it is as a player to have the game being decided by something other than the two teams on the ice. They were able to get another goal again on the power play to tie the game at 3 apiece.

The last 10 minutes were the most difficult, with us getting a goal called back and the replay showing it crossed the line.

We finally got a power play, but as we were getting our players onto the ice, the referee called us for delaying the game for not getting onto the ice fast enough.

I don't know how you can call a penalty like that at that time, but, like I said before, I'm not sure which game the ref was watching. The fans that were there watching began whistling loudly in protest (whistling in Europe is a form of booing).

The game ended in a 3-3 tie and it was a great game for us because you could really see how much our team has improved. The tie gave us our first point in four World Championship tournaments.

Our next game is against Latvia and we are going to take the energy from this last game and try to get the win tomorrow.