I used to live in Japan. There was 1 rink in the entire prefecture I lived in, and it happened to be in the the town adjacent to mine. I found out one of my co-workers coached the University ice hockey team (surprised they had one!) He invited me to join their practices and I immediately had my gear shipped from Canada.
After I started playing with them I also joined the prefecture's men's team. Since there was only 1 team we had to travel to other prefectures to play games. Games were pretty rare, but damn did they practice. Practice practice practice! Iverson's nightmare.
The players were actually pretty good. I played rep through minor hockey, and was definitely not the best player there. But - and it's hard to really understand unless you witness it - they couldn't really play hockey. Like, they had the skills but when you put it all together with 10 players skating around the ice, something was off.
Anyway, the point is it is pretty clear this kid has skills. But he's in the Japanese system. Practice and skills are definitely encouraged, but team play and strategy are not really. Maybe that is because there are so few hockey players in that country.
Bottom line: I think he should move to a "hockey" country in order to develop. Much like many North American soccer players head to European/South American academies in their teens. It is just something about the sport culture, not to mention the level of competition.
Good luck to the kid though!
がんばって！
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