Nagoya, Japan, October 8, 2018 - Erika Araki tallied a team-high 12 points as Japan downed Puerto Rico 3-0 (25-22, 25-14, 25-18) at the FIVB Women's World Championship on Monday night.
Japan coach Kumi Nakada: Yesterday we played five sets. Today there were many things. We got the three points. Tomorrow we are off. The next game we will try to unify the hearts of the team and have everyone together to give our all to proceed to the next round. I didn't use (Ai) Kurogo today because I didn't want hurt to get hurt. I gave her a rest.
Puerto Rico coach Jose Mieles: We were reminded of the high technical capacity of Japan tonight. They only had 10 errors in the match, while we had 29. It is difficult to win like that. Japan is quick and that caused us to make many mistakes. We will do our best in the remaining two matches.
Japan player Erika Araki: The team changed from last night but we won 3-0 which is good. I didn't attack well yesterday. Today I was better. We are going to unite to work hard for our next two matches against Serbia and Brazil.
Japan player Yuki Ishii: We got three points today. Our play was not high in perfection. We must correct and adjust our game for Serbia. We hope to do well from the beginning in the next.
Puerto Rico captain Natalia Valentin: The speed of Japan and low amount of errors made us unable to execute our gameplan. We have to try to continue to get better in our last two matches.