After becoming the first Japanese player to be chosen in the first round of the NBA draft, Rui Hachimura is the face of a basketball boom in his home country.

Hachimura's progress in the NBA is getting wall-to-wall coverage in Japanese media and his face can be seen advertising everything from shoes, to a bank, 5G internet and the nation's ubiquitous cup noodles.

Overall interest in the NBA has risen since Hachimura's emergence, with Rakuten, the company which holds the league's Japanese broadcast rights, seeing a 30 percent year-on-year increase in subscriptions in November.