Despite needing something close to a miracle to avoid relegation from this season's World Rugby Women's Sevens Series, Japan captain Chiharu Nakamura remains hopeful her team are still on course to shock the world at the Tokyo Olympics.

"Our target is to get a medal in 2020," she told Kyodo News following last weekend's Kitakyushu Sevens.

Nakamura admitted her team -- which finished 12th and last at Mikuni World Stadium -- had performed badly in front of their home crowd. But she hoped they would use the learning experience to good effect.

"This tournament is quite meaningful for us. We were under pressure as the home team and it's a good experience. We need to use that pressure as strength and not get nervous."

The Sakura Sevens currently trail Fiji and Ireland by 11 points with just two tournaments remaining, having picked up just four points in the three events to date.

To put things in perspective, China -- who played in Kitakyushu as a guest before joining the tour full time next season, most likely at Japan's expense -- have six points from reaching the quarterfinals in their one showing.

But Nakamura hasn't given up hope altogether.

"Fiji is a momentum team in that sometimes they are very good and sometimes not so good. And we are the same. We need to improve our quality and make the top eight (in the next two tournaments.) If we can't do that we can't stay in the World Series. So we have to work even harder than before."

"If we can create quick ball we can create attacking time. We know our weakness is rucking and physicality so we need to improve there and not run away from the physical fight."

The 30-year-old has certainly done her bit. She is currently ranked second in the series performance tracker, which records how many tackles, breaks, offloads and carries a player makes over the course of the season.

Joining her in the top seven is 18-year-old Yume Hirano, who scored three of Japan's nine tries last weekend.

Nakamura acknowledged her young teammates at times lacked the mental toughness needed to succeed and said she would do all she can to help them improve.

"I need to learn from other teams how to lead and how to be more flexible and be mature and make my young teammates more mature mentally. Physically, the coaching staff do that but mentally I have an important role to play."

Joining Nakamura in thinking all is not lost when it comes to Tokyo 2020 is Shannon Parry, who co-captained Australia's gold-medal winning team at the Rio Olympics.

"It's clear (Japan) are getting better the more matches they can play together," Parry said this week at an event organized by the Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce Japan. "And honestly 2020 is definitely going to be on the cards for them. They are going to be up there and in contention."

"When people put money in the right places you will end up getting the right results. That's what we did. We went full-time, we went professional and we chased the gold medal and we came home with the result."

"If the investment is in there, you get the right people, the right coaches, the right support staff, anything is possible and I think Japan is definitely on the right direction for women's rugby."