Hai! Ie! Matte! We've all heard those words, and we know what they mean. Even if we think we don't. They're vital to communication among players of the sport of kuriketto, to which this website is devoted.

They are what yes, no and wait translate to in Japan, where cricket is called kuriketto. Cricket? In Japan? Yes.

It's been played there since 1863, or just four years after baseball arrived on the islands. Baseball boomed and has been indigenised to the point that there are deep and distinct differences between the culture of the game in Japan compared to in the United States.

Around seven-million people play baseball in Japan every year, making it easily the country's most popular sport. Cricket? Maybe 5,000 a year. Sumo wrestling, football, tennis, golf, boxing, basketball, motor racing and judo are all bigger in Japan than cricket.

Japanese baseball is so big that even the Americans have taken notice. You no doubt know of the Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani, who hits as powerfully he pitches, much to the amazement of Major League Baseball, where entrenched specialisation means the concept of the all-rounder is almost unheard of. But Ohtani is not alone. Japanese players have been turning out for MLB clubs since 1964. In all, 74 Japanese have been on the books of MLB organisations. Now, what might be called the baseballification of Japanese cricket is underway.

"We have a few key performance indicators that we try to stick to," Kazuma Kato-Stafford, Japan's captain at the men's under-19 World Cup in Namibia and Zimbabwe, told Cricbuzz. "One goal that we really want to achieve, no matter what, no matter what team we're playing against, is to ensure that we speak only Japanese on the field.

"We have guys coming from different backgrounds; guys who have grown up, like myself, in Australia; guys who have grown up in South-East Asian countries. We're all at different levels of Japanese, but we want to be as good as we can."

That the broader cultural imperative of shared language should be among a team's KPIs says much about Japan's approach. There is a Japanese way of baseball - more disciplined and detailed in all aspects and more respectful of officials, teammates and opponents alike than its brasher American counterpart. The Japanese way of cricket is in the making, starting with the way the players communicate.

Kato-Stafford was born in Brisbane and still lives there, not least because the level of coaching and competition he is exposed to regularly there is exponentially higher than in Japan. He looks Japanese, but as soon as he opens his mouth it's clear he's also an Aussie. How's his grasp of the language?

"It's getting a lot better. I'm not fluent yet, I'm disappointed to say. But if I was to live in Japan for a year or two I'd have no issues. Once it becomes a professional conversation I struggle a little bit because there are different ways of speaking once you're talking to people who are higher up than you. It's a work in progress. I want to become fluent, like the other boys. We're all working hard at it every day."

Most of those other boys in the squad have a story similar to Kato-Stafford's. They're the product of relationships between one Japanese parent and another from somewhere else, hence the hyphenated surnames of six players in the current men's under-19 squad of 15. Often that other place is Australia, the United Kingdom or New Zealand.

Alan Curr, the Japan Cricket Association's (JCA) chief operating officer, likes to tell a story starring the under-19 team's coach, Reo Sakurano-Thomas. "He was born in Japan and moved to New Zealand when he was five or six, grew up there, and moved back to Japan when he was in his early 20s," Curr told Cricbuzz.

"We had a dinner where a lot of the half-Japanese guys who are now playing in the men's team flew over. Afterwards, as we left the restaurant, Reo said to me, 'I've never met a half-Japanese person before, and I just met five in one day. And they're all just like me!'"

Kato-Stafford's half-Aussieness explains why baseball - which in Australia is something like what cricket is in Japan - wasn't a hit with him. But a Japanese kid who doesn't like baseball is not unlike an Indian kid who doesn't like cricket. Then what?

"Growing up in Japan is just all baseball, so it's not going to work out for everyone," Kato-Stafford said. "Some guys don't like it but still want to be involved in a sport. They've come to cricket, they've enjoyed it and it's something they want to stick with.

"They have said to me that at times they feel like outcasts, but it's not like they get belittled. It's more because baseball is so big in Japan that some people think it's a bit strange for guys to go to a different bat-and-ball sport."

Twelve-year-olds in Japan are heavily encouraged to join bukatsu, extracurricular sport or cultural clubs attached to schools. The many who pick baseball practise and play it, all year round, for the rest of their school careers. Precious few schools offer cricket in this way. Baseball? Just about all of them. Thus baseball burnout at 18 is real. By the time university looms, cricket - baseball's quieter, quirkier, less ubiquitous cousin - is an attractive option for a growing number of youngsters.

What about Japan's South Asians? Unusually for countries where cricket isn't among the biggest sports, only three members of Japan's under-19 World Cup squad owe their to the global game's most powerful development engine. Eleven of Tanzania's men's under-19s are from there, along with all 15 of the US players.

Japan's foreign population is rising, but is still less than 5% of the total of around 122.7-million. Half of the expatriates come from China, Vietnam and South Korea combined, with significant numbers of Filipinos, Brazilians and Nepalese. The cricketing hotbeds of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are represented in Japan in sharply growing numbers, but they remain in the minority. For now, Japan's teams largely look - if not always sound - Japanese.

"We pick people who have Japanese passports," Curr said. "We do pick people who don't have them - of the group [at the under-19 World Cup], two players do not. One of them was born in Japan, so he's eligible anyway.

"The South Asian population in Japan has skyrocketed in the last 10 years, particularly as relations with our nearer neighbours, China and Korea, have not been as strong. The workforce around IT, mechanical engineering, that kind of stuff, has started to come from cricket-playing nations in South Asia.

"However, when we look to our senior teams, we have to make sure that we have a squad that can play in the Asian Games, which involves eligibility criteria. When we're picking our junior teams, we need to stay strong with that, too."

The Asian Games in Nagoya, the capital of Japan's Aichi Prefecture, in September and October loom large for the country's cricketers. As do, by extension since that competition will serve as qualification for the Olympics, the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Support from the Japan Olympic Committee has helped the JCA hire more coaches, a strength and conditioning specialist, and an analyst. In more obvious cricket-playing countries, those roles come standard. Japan is not yet among those countries, but their ambition is obvious. For them, it's not about being there. It's about competing, and that means matching the bigger teams in all areas.

The game is a small sport there, but so is rugby union in Australia. Yet the Aussies have won rugby's World Cup twice. That's more than England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales or France, and fewer only than South Africa and New Zealand.

When the resources of developed economies like those in Australia and Japan meet seriousness to succeed, great things happen. South Africans discovered that when Japan's Cherry Blossoms beat the mighty Springboks 34-32 in the 2015 World Cup.

Japanese cricket is in a similarly serious search - and surge - for success. That message is conveyed to non-cricketing Japanese people by the fact that Mizuno, the country's global sports equipment giant, are cricket's clothing sponsors. If Mizuno back you, you must mean business.

Part of that business was done some 14,500 kilometres and a 27-hour flight - or flights - away from Tokyo at the under-19 World Cup. Japan were based in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, where they lost heavily to Sri Lanka and Australia before Ireland won a tighter game against them. On Saturday, a gold-letter day, they beat Tanzania by nine wickets with 21.4 overs to spare. They went home after the first round regardless, but they did so happier than previously.

This was Japan's second appearance at the tournament. They made it to their first, the 2020 edition in South Africa, when Papua New Guinea were forced to forfeit their last qualifying match against Japan because 11 of their squad of 15 were suspended for shoplifting.

The closest Japan came to winning a game six years ago was when their first match, against New Zealand in Potchefstroom, was washed out after the Kiwis piled up 195 for 2 in 28.5 overs. Japan lost their other five games by 10 wickets, nine wickets - twice - 182 runs, and eight wickets. And with between 81 and 271 balls remaining. They were bowled out every time besides the washout; for 41 by India and 93 by England. They finished bottom of their group and last among all 16 teams.

To go from that to making 201 for 8 against Australia and 247 for 9 against Ireland, with Hugo Tani-Kelly scoring an undefeated 101 against the Lankans and 79 not out against the Aussies, Charlie Hara-Hinza making 57 against the Irish, and Nihar Parmar clipping 53 not out against the Tanzanians, is what progress looks like. Likewise beating Tanzania this time after losing to Canada and Nigeria in 2020. In 2020 Japan's most successful bowler was medium pacer Kento Dobell, who took 3 for 183 at an average of 61.00. Six years on Tim Moore, another seamer, claimed five wickets for 73 at 14.60.

"The qualifier we had [in 2020] was the first tournament that team played together," Curr said. "They went on tour to Brisbane, which is where we met Kaz [Kato-Stafford]. We did that two weeks before the World Cup started. That was the only other cricket they had played together as a unit.

"Compare that to this group. Kaz has been playing in the U19 team for three years, along with a handful of others. This is these guys' fourth tournament in the last 12 months.

"In the previous group, some of them didn't even have passports. The difference in maturity and experience and life skills, as well as cricket skills, is poles apart. That first team were the trailblazers. They made us realise it was possible to qualify for the World Cup."

And that this is about more than mere cricket. "A lot of our players were born in Japan, lived there for five or six years, and then transferred back to where their other parent is from," Curr said. "They would come back once a year to see their grandparents - that was the only thing they had to come back to.

"Now that they've also got cricket to come back for, and we've had grandparents come up to us and be really grateful for giving an extra reason for the kids to come back. Because it means they're seeing so much more of them."

The feeling is mutual, as Kato-Stafford made plain: "I love Japan. I love the culture, the food; just everything about it. If I could go back to only one country for the rest of my life, I'd choose Japan."

Seems fair. Japan, after all, chose him.