Whatever challenges Huddersfield Town and Australia defender Jason Davidson faces during the course of his career, they are are unlikely to be more daunting than the school of hard knocks he survived in Japan as a naiive teenager far from home.

Arriving on a scholarship at Tokyo's Seiritsu Gakuen sports school aged 14, Davidson found himself flung into a boot camp environment where discipline dominated and the weak were weeded out.

"It was pretty extreme. When I was late one day as punishment they not only shaved my head but everyone's head," he said of the school famed for churning out future Japanese internationals.

"When you rock up late for training and they do that sort of thing, well, you find out the hard way pretty fast."

With a Japanese grandmother and a father in Alan Davidson who is a fully certified Socceroos legend, the callow kid heeded the lessons over three years to became fluent in both Japan's mother tongue and its football ways.

"Mentally, physically, emotionally, it was huge for me and I matured a lot from that experience," recalls the 24 year-old.

“Going there at 14, not speaking the language, having a different a culture, it was tough but it made me the person and the footballer I am today..

“We all lived together in a dorm. You has to respect your elders. I didn’t understand why a 14 year-old had to show so much respect to a 15 year-old, for example.

"But there was a hierarchy there. The older you got the less duties you had. When you were 14 you did everything. We had to wake up early and make breakfast for everybody, clean the dorm the toilets, that sort of thing.

"Going there so young means that nothing really fazes me now."

Davidson transitioned from a would-be winger to a left back in Japan.

“I learned different things from everywhere I went, Japan, Portugal, Holland, they were all technical countries which is why I class myself as a defender that likes to play football, and play out from the back," he said.

His resolve was tested during a frustrating 12 months at West Bromwich Albion where his Premier League dream flickered and faded after being signed from Dutch club Heracles off the back of a shimmering 2014 World Cup for Australia.

"There were positives and negatives. I didn’t play as much as I wanted but I got to taste the Premier League,” said Davidson, who is now using the Championship as a springboard back to a higher plane.

"It showed me what top notch to football is about. We had 15 internationals in the squad and the competition was intense.

“The World Cup was another dream that came at a young age. Words can’t describe how satisfying that was. But also disappointing in that we didn’t get the results.

"That gave us the confidence to go on and win the Asian Cup six months later."

Davidson knows he needs to be playing regularly to keep his national team spot, and in the past three weeks that hasn’t been the case at club level with his manager, David Wagner, giving him a breather after a sapping season which has brought him 20 appearances for club and country so far.

“It’s been a tough year for me personally, I have done a lot of travelling and it's been hard on the body," Davidson said. "The coach has changed a few things up. He wants me to get back to full fitness and thinks I’ve been overused in the past few months.

“I’ve been to Australia seven times this year and it’s affected my performances at club level because of a bit of fatigue.

"It’s a matter of me rgetting 100 per cent right mentally and physically, and going from there.

“Hopefully I can get back involved over the Christmas period. I am definitely feeling fresher now and I have that hunger to come back firing.”

Huddersfield is just three points off the drop zone, with Davidson confident it will soon climb clear of trouble under Wagner, who was Jürgen Klopp’s former assistant at Borussia Dortmund.

“He has brought something different to the table and is getting the whole team fitter and stronger,"  Davidson said.

“Just like at Dortmund, he is trying to play a high pressing game. We certainly have a team good enough to do well in this division.”