Japan coach John Kirwan was naturally delighted with his side’s 46-8 win over Canada. But the former All Black wasn’t ready to rest on his laurels.

“I am obviously happy with the win,” he said. “There were a lot of positives but some negatives we need to work on for next week.”

“The positives were our reaction to turnovers, our good pressure in defense and the way we took our opportunities. It was a pretty good score line. I also thought the front row played very well. The negatives were we need to sort the line-out out and we need to be a little more patient and construct a little more.”

His counterpart, Kieran Crowley, admitted Japan were the better team.

“Japan deserved to beat us,” he said. “They took advantage of the opportunities we gave them. We never looked after the ball in the first half and they made us pay. We had a good summer and I thought we had made strides. We were given a lesson in rugby today.”

Japan captain Takashi Kikutani said his side had been very patient in defense. He singled out flankers Michael Leitch and Phil O’Reilly for their ability to cause turnovers  and he gave special praise to the tight five, joking that he had been lucky to score a try from a tighthead scrum, “the front five did all the hard work.”

Canada captain Pat Riordan was particularly impress by the intensity, passion and speed of the Japanese team and said they had improved remarkably in the contact area since the last time the two sides met, back in 2007 at the Rugby World Cup.

Looking ahead to next week’s game in Tokyo, Kirwan said he hoped his side would learn from the win.

“There was a period in the game when we dropped the intensity,” he said. “We need to make sure next week we don’t have mental lapses and play for the full 80 minutes.

“It’s important to show improvement. We are heading in the right direction. But it is important to play well next week and get to 13th. Our goal is to get into the top 10.”

Victory at the Prince Chichibu Memorial Ground on Nov. 21 over the same opponents would see Japan (14th) swap places with Canada (13th) in the IRB world rankings.