He played in the 2009 World Baseball Classic as an emergency replacement for Shuichi Murata, who suffered an injury in the second round of the tournament.

Kurihara hit over .700 with two home runs in the Tohoku Regional Tournament held in the spring of 1998, his junior year, and led his team to a berth in the 80th National High School Baseball Championship that summer, but they lost to Seiryo High School, the Ishikawa champions, 10-1 in the first round (Kurihara went 1-for-4 with the team's lone RBI).

Though that appearance ended up being his first and only on the national stage, Kurihara was a highly coveted position player with plus-power and speed by his senior year (1999) and was being scouted by 11 different NPB teams.

Despite high expectations by the Carp organization for the 2003 season, Kurihara struggled to secure a permanent spot on the ichigun team's roster, going back and forth between the majors and minors.

Though the Carp were already far out of title contention at the time, the baserunning blunder drew the ire of then-manager Koji Yamamoto, who removed Kurihara from the active roster and sent him down to the minors, declining to use him at all for the remaining eight games of the season despite opting to rest many of his starters and use other young players in place of them.

While he did not play at the ichigun level until June 21 in a game against the Swallows and did not see his first start until June 28 against the Tigers, he hit .275 with five home runs and 18 RBIs and slugged .551 in a 20-game rehab stint in the minors, leading then-nigun team manager Tomio Kinoshita to say that it would be last time Kurihara would ever play at Yū Baseball Ground, the home of the Carp's farm team.

He hit .352 with 10 homers and 21 RBIs in the month of August alone and his .366 on-base and .563 slugging percentage were all career highs, as were his numbers in all three Triple Crown categories.

Kurihara spent much of January 2006 in Arizona to prepare for the coming 2006 season, reducing his body fat percentage from 10 to 9 percent and bulking up until he weighed 100 kg (220 lb).

He saw his first start in the cleanup spot on May 24 in an interleague game against the Orix Buffaloes (though he went 0-for-3 with a pair of strikeouts and a walk) and hit .379 with five home runs and 23 RBIs that month.

He got hot in July as well, hitting .305 with seven homers and 19 RBIs and winning the first Central League monthly Most Valuable Player award of his career.

He played in all 144 games for the first time in his career despite bone spurs in his elbow and finished the 2007 season with a .310 batting average (fifth in the league), 25 home runs and 92 RBI.

With the Takahiro Arai's departure via free agency to the Tigers, Kurihara was officially appointed the team's cleanup hitter for the 2008 season.

[citation needed] Kurihara arrived in San Diego on March 21, the day before the semi-finals against the United States, and struggled to overcome the jet lag and fatigue due to travel, going 0-for-3, striking out twice and grounding into a double play.

He has commented that he modeled his swing after Hiromitsu Ochiai, who played for the Lotte Orions, Dragons, Giants and Nippon-Ham Fighters and won Triple Crown honors in 1982, 1985, and 1986.

Kurihara was never regarded as being particularly skilled defensively, winning the Gold Glove award at first base in 2008 but becoming the subject of criticism by many who believed he was chosen largely on merit of his offensive production.