Hokkaido, the northernmost place in Japan, opens the door to winter faster than other places, and the leaves are already changing colors from green to yellow and red. And this makes Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters skipper Hideki Kuriyama genuinely thankful to be playing baseball this late in the year.

“It’s beautiful to see the leaves changing colors, but driving down to Sapporo Dome, I hadn’t seen it,” Kuriyama said before Tuesday’s Game 3 of the Japan Series against the Hiroshima Carp. “That means we hadn’t played baseball this time of year for a while. I feel fortunate to be playing right now.”

The 55-year-old took the helm in 2012 and guided the Pacific League club to the Japan Series against the Yomiuri Giants that year (Yomiuri won the series in six games). But he hadn’t led the team to the Japanese Fall Classic again until this year.

Though the Fighters don’t have to worry about the weather playing under the roof of the dome, they may still have some snow around town when they open the season in late March. Kuriyama said that when he returned home on Monday that it was snowing all day in Kuriyama, Hokkaido, where he resides and that he would welcome the opportunity for his team to be playing until the snow begins to fall.

“We start the season while we still have some snow left in town, and we play competitive games util it begins snowing. This is what we want to do,” Kuriyama said.

However, Kuriyama doesn’t just get sentimental about the transition of the seasons. Down 0-2 in the best-of-seven series, he was focused on trying to lead his team to a Tuesday victory at home.

But in Kuriyama’s mind, the key to posting wins against the Carp isn’t so complicated. He said that the Fighters just need to play their brand of ball, which he thinks they didn’t do for the first two games in Hiroshima on Saturday and Sunday.

For the games in Sapporo, the designated hitter is used and both managers will have to rack their brains to decide their lineups.

Yet Kuriyama said that it didn’t take too much time to jot down the names on his lineup card for Tuesday’s game.

“We are down 0-2,” he said. “And we are playing in a series. So I didn’t dwell on who’s doing good or not. I just made my lineup for today to give us the best chance to score. It was simple.”

Staying positive: Fighters two-way player Shohei Otani said on Tuesday that it certainly felt great to be back at home and that the team could refresh its mind after back-to-back losses to open the Japan Series.

Otani was the starting pitcher in Saturday’s Game 1 and took the loss. He allowed three runs and two homers pitching in six innings in Nippon Ham’s 5-1 defeat.

The 22-year-old, who is expected to be used as a designated hitter for the contests in Hokkaido, is keeping a positive outlook for the remainder of the series.

Otani said he “had some fun at Mazda (despite the losses), but they still have “a long way (to go) in the series.”

He added: “Hopefully, we can bring some momentum back. I know I’ll get some jitters (going into Game 3), but right now, it’s important for us to play as a whole team.”

Don’t change your style: For Nippon Ham rookie hurler Hirotoshi Takanashi, who will start in Wednesday’s Game 4, he has no intention of pitching differently than he did all year on the biggest stage in Japanese baseball.

“I don’t plan to change anything,” Takanashi, 25, said on Tuesday. “My best pitch is a fastball and I’ll just try to pitch that as well as I can. Hopefully, I’ll pitch at my own pace and it brings our team some momentum.”

Takanashi, who had a 10-2 record with a 2.38 ERA and is one of the leading candidates for the Pacific League Rookie of the Year, actually knows about facing the Carp hitters.

On June 8 at Sapporo Dome, he made his first start of the year against them in interleague action and earned the win. He gave up four hits and two runs (one earned) in five innings.

“I couldn’t afford to dwell on many things as it was my first start,” Takanashi recalled. “I gave up extra-base hits for the runs. But if you don’t walk hitters, you can limit the damage to the minimum. Also, if you let (the Carp’s) leadoff hitter (Kosuke Tanaka) and No. 2 hitter (Ryosuke Kikuchi) do what they want to, it’s going to let them play their ball. So that’s what I have to be careful (about).”