Sent My Son to a Japanese Public School The Reality of Foreigner Life

So, Kasin, what do you like about your new school in Japan? Nothing. Nothing? Oh, no. This is going to be a long year. When we were planning on moving to Japan and sending our kids to public school here in Japan, there wasn't much information online about the realities of enrolling in schools as foreigners, so I didn't really know what to expect. I knew that there would be some challenges, especially given the language barrier, but I didn't realize it would be this difficult. And that's why I wanted to share my family's experience with Japanese public schools for anyone that might be moving here with kids, or if anyone's just curious to know what it's like to go to school here as a foreigner. So in this video, I'll share my family's experience with Japanese public schools, from the challenges of finding a school and enrolling, to getting all of the supplies and uniforms ready for the first day. I'll also share how the transition has been for the whole family as we navigate into this new life without any common language. And if you have any questions along the way as you watch this video, leave them in the comment section below and we can start a conversation. And if you're interested in life in Japan in general, hit subscribe and follow along the journey. Okay, it's time to get the kids ready for school. Let's go. Let's first start with hoikin, which is child care and not preschool. There is a big difference, which I'll get to shortly. Hoikin is child care for kids as young as six months old. It's a heavily subsidized system designed for children of working parents and oftentimes has very long hours to match the parents' working schedule. When we were planning on coming to Japan, we had envisioned both of our kids enrolling in one of the many schools within walking distance or biking distance from our home. Yeah, right. We quickly realized that, at least for hoikin, that the process to enroll is highly competitive and it's based on a point system. We've spoken to many Japanese parents since, and they all say it's very, very difficult to get it, even for the local families. So given our family situation, there was no chance our daughter would be admitted. But on the bright side, raising kids here in Japan is very convenient. There are community centers that offer free drop-in programs for kids. There are loads of indoor and outdoor playgrounds. And unlike in North America, the shopping malls here are actually very accommodating for families, a topic I hope to make a video on sometime soon. But if you do need child care for your young kids, there are other options. We contacted a few international kindergartens, which have more open admission requirements. Pretty much just pay the tuition and you're good to go. And we ended up enrolling our daughter in a part-time program at one of those. Although we did have to compromise a bit on location and, of course, the cost. And if you are curious to learn a little bit more of cost of living in Japan, you can check out one of my other videos. Okay, next up, let's talk about yoichun, or kindergarten. It's for kids aged three to five years old. And it will be the primary focus for the rest of the video. It consists of Kindergarten 1, Kindergarten 2, and Grade 1. And it mirrors the learning structure, environment, and timing of elementary school. So it is considered the first step into the school system. So that means school hours are roughly 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., which is a lot shorter than hoikuen, which can be from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Yoichun is open to all students, regardless of their parents' working status. So as long as a school has space, your child can be admitted. Applications are done at the school. And the cost is heavily subsidized as well by the government. All you have to pay are the weekly or monthly lunch fees, facility fees, and registration fees. So when we moved into our house, we were given a list of schools by the city ward office. And we were told to contact them ourselves and to see if there was space available. And of course, you had to call them. You couldn't do email. And it had to be in Japanese. So thankfully, our neighbors helped us out calling some schools. And we quickly found out, actually, that a lot of them were full. So that was a little bit deflating, especially after learning about the daycare situation for our daughter. But we found a school that had space and we booked a tour. So we ended up enrolling at the school. And our son started halfway through the school year. He started off going for three hours a day, which was something that the principal and us agreed upon to make the transition better for everyone. And after a month, he was able to go full day. So he was able to have lunch with his classmates and be picked up at the regular time. And regarding lunches, Japanese schools are notorious for having fresh and healthy lunches. And I was very happy to learn that the school was no different. There are dedicated cooking and serving staff on site. And they prepare the food for the entire school. Actually, a lot of the classes do participate in preparing the food. And all children participate in cleaning up after themselves. The menus are full of fresh and seasonal ingredients. There's always a soup, rice or noodle, meat, vegetable. And my son often comes home saying that he really enjoyed the meals and often asked for seconds. What I found very interesting was that the teachers sit in the classroom and eat the same meals as the students with the students. So if your children are older, they would either go to shougaku, chugakou or kotogakou. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing those. Which are compulsory education and equivalent to elementary and high school in North America. Enrollment for these are guaranteed. And you get assigned to a school based on where you're living. So now let's talk about the things we had to prepare for the first day of school. Apart from the seemingly endless paperwork that you have to prepare for in Japan, and specifically for school, there's a long list of uniforms and supplies that the school provided us that we had to acquire. As you can see here, this particular school has some pretty cute looking outfits. There are outfits for every day, for physical education class, a smock for art class and for lunchtime. And the one thing that surprised me, now that the weather has turned a lot colder, is that the children don't wear pants in the wintertime. Shorts and long socks is what my son wears to school, even when it's five degrees in the morning. I've spoken to some Japanese people about this, and they say that children are not encouraged to wear heavier clothing so that their bodies can become stronger and resist the cold more. I'm not sure how much of that is actually true, but that's what they told me. We were provided a long list of supplies that the children use in the classroom. The majority of the supplies were provided by the school. Things such as crayons, modeling clay, scissors, etc. And the other supplies such as towel, hand towel, plastic cup, toothbrush, we had to provide ourselves. The most tedious part of this was to label each item. Yes, even each pencil crayon had to be labeled with the name. The label maker I used is fantastic. You can program it on your smartphone and via Bluetooth it prints out on the printer. You can check out a link to that below if you're interested. The school that our son's going to requires so many of these little cloth bags to be handmade. This one will hold maybe his shoes. There's another bag for his earthquake emergency blanket. And thankfully, this is the only one that I have to do because our neighbor's children went to this school years ago and she gave us all of their bags. So they're all in good shape still. We can just use those. This is the only one I have to do. But so we've been pretty therapeutic, you know. A great way to spend Saturday night. Got my fig. Got my music. As you saw earlier in the video, my son was originally not thrilled about school and I can't blame him. No one there speaks English. He doesn't speak Japanese. But he is slowly picking it up and at least every day when I pick him up, he has a big smile on his face. The pickup and drop-off routine is very structured. The children are dropped off at the school yard. They change into their indoor shoes and they head to their classrooms all by themselves. At pickup time, the children are waiting for their parents to be picked up from the classroom and each parent must wear a school ID before entering the campus and that's a rule that's strictly enforced. My son's class has about 25 students with one teacher and two assistants. Inside the classrooms, each child has their own cubby where they can store all their belongings and the children sit at tables in groups of six with each child wearing a name pin. When they go out of the classroom, the classes will all put on their coordinated colored hats for identification purposes. My son, he's in the purple class or the violet class. There was a time when small groups of parents were invited to sit in the classroom for about 30 minutes at a time. I noticed that there was a lot of structure involved in the day. For example, after they finished their writing exercises, the students would all line up, hand in the papers to the teacher and then proceed to go grab their water bottles. They would bring them back to their seats, have a few sips and then get up, put the water bottles back and return back to their seats. Of course, this was a room filled with four-year-olds so it wasn't that orderly but I could tell that the students knew what was expected of them. The teacher also used both the piano and hand gestures to signal the start or end of an activity and when it's time to go to the toilet, the class will all go to the toilet at the same time. As there is no common language between us and the school, we often are communicating with the teacher via handwritten notes. We'll receive a note from the teacher with a couple of reminders. We'll either write back to the teacher the next day or we'll try to use a translator at pickup. The teachers and the staff, they're all very, very accommodating although we are the only English-speaking family at the school. So overall, the experience with Japanese public schools has been pretty good. It's very similar to just living in Japan in general when you're trying to fit in as a foreigner. There's a lot of structure, there's a lot of order, heavy focus on everyone contributing to the community. Everyone is very supportive and friendly so if you're looking to enroll your children into Japanese schools, definitely consider the other options. Make sure that this one is best for you and your family and if you do have any questions at all, leave them in the comment section and thanks for watching. Take care. Bye-bye.