Japan 'enforcer' brings fear factor for Boks
The Brave Blossoms suggest they will instil fear into South Africa when the two teams meet in their opening World Cup match at the Brighton Community Stadium on Saturday.
"When you step out onto the field at a World Cup the atmosphere is incredible," Japan's record caps holder Hitoshi Ono said.
"It comes down to how you take it all in.
"Do you let it get to you and shrivel up, or do you enjoy it and feed off it?
"If you learn to have fun, it will fire you up and fired up is what we want to be when we take on South Africa.
"We're going to stay low when we tackle, we're going to keep reloading and push the South African players all the way to the end to a point where they become scared of us.
"If we can do that, I'm sure the fans in England will get behind Japan and we want to use that as motivation."
The 37-year-old Ono is set to appear in his third consecutive World Cup hoping to end Japan's 24-year wait for a win in the competition.
At the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand, John Kirwan's Japan targeted two wins but left the tournament with three defeats and a draw.
Ono, in hindsight, feels Japan put themselves under unnecessary pressure by trying too hard to score the two victories.
This time, he says Eddie Jones' XV will not make the same mistake, despite setting a higher goal of reaching the quarterfinals from a pool also including Scotland, Samoa and the United States.
Confident in his team's fitness after a gruelling five-month training camp that lasted until four days before the team's departure to England, Ono said Japan will go full throttle against South Africa and not think about anything beyond that match over the next six days.
"We played well for large parts against France in our first game [of the 2011 World Cup], but came out on the losing end.
"We then lost badly to New Zealand and were put in a position where we had to beat Tonga to attain our goal. That put us under pressure and we made a mistake on the very first play, a play that we worked on countless times in training.
"It completely threw us off. We worried too much about winning two games.
"This time, our goal is to reach the last eight but we're not going to think too far ahead. We'll take it one game at a time and let the results take care of themselves."
Source: @rugbyworldcup
