Nippon-Ham of Hiromi Ito pitcher looked forward to working with Yusei Kikuchi pitcher of the Angels, who will be his teammate in Samurai Japan, on March 17. Although they have not had any particular contact up to this point, he greeted the left-hander through social networking sites, which he often watched on YouTube and other sites. He is looking forward to meeting Kikuchi in person, who has a great ability to communicate with words.

Yusei, who is six years older than Ito, also left a strong impression on Ito with his heroic performance at Koshien. He revealed that he has often watched videos of him in recent years, saying, "I learn a lot from how good he is at putting things into words. He breaks down his interpretations and explains them in a digestible way. I think he can do that because he has a lot of knowledge, so I would like to communicate with him so that I can get hints from his casual words."

Ito's voluntary training at ESCON is going well. On this day, he played catch with a WBC ball and checked out all of breaking ball. "I think it's coming along pretty well, but I'm not going to rush it and I'll give it a little more time. There's no problem with my shoulders and elbows, but if I work too hard on my fingertips, they'll peel off," he said of his current situation. He is calmly preparing for his second big stage.