Hello from this steamy August in Tokyo. My plan was to complain about the heat, but the heat index in parts of the U.S. has been so high I’ll refrain. I’ll just say that never have I sweated this much and this persistently in my life.

In July we moved from Yokohama to Tokyo, and will be in temporary housing until the end of August. If you’re worried that might suck for us, please rest assured that we’re in a super cute apartment in a trendy area. Best of all, my commute to work is a 25 minute walk instead of 80 minutes on the train/walking. Sure, walking is sweaty, and I can’t keep up with all my podcasts anymore, but I’ve really enjoyed this lifestyle change.

Our son transferred nursery schools when we moved, and at the risk of boring some of you to death, the process made me think it’s high time I write about Japanese nursery schools.

The basics

First of all, nursery schools (called Hoikuen) are government subsidized for children from 0-5 years old. Can you imagine? Parents are eligible to apply if they are employed, job hunting or attending school (among other criteria). Tuition varies based on income levels, but caps at between $800-$900 per month in my particular location. In Yokohama it was about $200 cheaper per month, which is how I know we’re in a ritzy neighborhood. (The Ferarri dealership was another clue). For reference, we were paying $1500 per month in Virginia for fewer hours per day. Also, there is no tuition at all for kids between the age of 3 and 5 here. Yes, you read that correctly.

The hoikuens operate to uniform standards, but vary in size from super tiny (our last one was a total of 7 students) to somewhere around 150 kids. Our former hoikuen capped at 3 years old, but the one we’re in now goes up to 5 years old. Nursery schools often offer extended evening hours (ours goes until 8:15pm), Saturday care, and early morning hours. Parents have to pay more for extended hours, but it’s a lot cheaper than a babysitter. Also, a doctor and dentist visit the school every month to examine the kids, so we have monthly reports on height/weight gain and dental health. Amazing.

Before we came to Japan we heard it wasn’t really worth applying to hoikuen because demand massively outweighs capacity. We applied anyway, while implementing Plan A, which was hiring a full time nanny. This triggered a rolling personal crisis for me, since the cost of a nanny made working seem very close to a waste of time. But then! Last July, a month before leaving for Japan, our son was accepted to a hoikuen! We jumped at the chance to expose him to Japanese (and other kids). I’m pretty sure we have the pandemic to thank for creating this opening for us. A lot of hoikuens in our neighborhood still have vacancies, which is rare, and seems to be direct result of COVID19..

The Beginning

Becoming hoikuen parents was a true culture shock for us. First and foremost, the teachers don’t speak any English, aside for a handful of nouns, and all written communication is in unadulterated Japanese. Second, there are many many rules to follow and forms to fill out. Most rules are relayed to us by letter after we break them. For example, when the weather got hot in May or June, we took our son to school in sandals and shorts. The next day we got a letter saying “please don’t dress your child in shorts or sandals.” Haha! The goal was protection from mosquitoes, so it ultimately made sense, but was not something I anticipated (bug spray?) We’re also not allowed to dress our child in hooded garments (dangerous) or one piece outfits (I actually don’t know the reason for this).

My son’s artwork. He’s 1.5 years old, so the teachers are doing a lot here :)

At the beginning, we expected to drop our child off on the first day of school and pick him up at 4:30 or 5pm, but were told that he needed to undergo a two week introductory period. This meant that on his first day he spent 1 hour at school, his second and third days were 2 hours, and so on. In retrospect, this was really helpful for our child, who was nine months old and suddenly surrounded by people speaking Japanese who were feeding him things like whitebait and seaweed. But despite the healthiness of a gradual adjustment period, it was a rude surprise for two parents who were expected to dive into work right after arriving in Japan.

The hoikuen also refused to accept breast milk, so we abruptly weaned our son with no warning whatsoever. Luckily, he enjoyed formula and that particular piece went fairly smoothly. The final major adjustment for him was that the school schedule only accommodated for one nap at noon, and no morning snack. Like a real foreign idiot, I thought these problems were negotiable, but after a few extensive conversations that ended with “we will observe your son carefully,” I realized that my child’s individual nap needs were no match for The Schedule. This was one of our first tastes of the rigidity of process and protocol that can be a regular part of life/work in Japan.

It took him and us quite a while to adjust to his new daycare, and for a few weeks it felt unsustainable to me. But then things got better. Instead of 2 naps per day, he took one 3 hour (!) nap at school, He started sleeping through the night at home, and eating second helpings of lunch and snack at school. When we dropped him off he was happy to be there, and he was happy to be picked up at the end of the day. The teachers basically fawned over him, and we had many broken discussions about his cuteness. What a RELIEF. Teachers: 1, Me: 0 (but really we all won). On our last day, I cried and all the teachers cried, and one of them showed me a tiny speech she’d translated on her phone that said something like “we will never forget the wonderful memories of this time.”

Transferring schools

Knowing that bureaucracy is an essential part of Japanese society, I started working on transferring our son to a hoikuen in Tokyo back in January. Even though the application guidebook was translated into English, some phrases were confusingly vague, and there were several points where I was convinced I’d missed a major deadline, or that our child suddenly no longer qualified for hoikuen. I made 4 or 5 visits to the ward office in Tokyo, and 3 to the ward office in Yokohama. One visit involved me turning in a form I had filled out, and the city official asking me to fill out the same form again in front of her. I still have no idea why, but wonder if it was to verify that I’m actually me? I had many broken conversations with city employees, and filled out a big packet of forms. I also visited hoikuen in Tokyo and tried to ask questions and understand the answers. A facebook group I’m part of terrorized me into thinking that 18 month olds are expected to be potty trained, and that most hoikuens require handmade clothing and accessories for the children (whaat?). These last two points have not proven true for us, thank goodness.

After finishing all the paperwork (finally), our son was accepted to a hoikuen in Tokyo about a week before we moved! Then he needed a medical exam and an interview with the new school (2 hours long). Then, we had to fill out at least 10 more forms - including photography permission slips, an extensive health history, and our son’s current daily schedule. After that, he could start the introduction process, and so began our second two week integration period. This time it was faster, since the structure of the day was similar, and the hoikuen activities were pretty familiar, so he was not dealing with culture shock. Our son loves his new school, so things are going smoothly.

School night prep

One of the biggest differences between our U.S. and Japanese daycare experiences is preparation for the school day. Let’s begin with the daily packing list:

Backpack
Change of clothes: there is at least one clothing change every day after lunch, regardless of whether or not the outfit is dirty. Parents must have 3 outfits at the nursery at all times.
3 bibs
3 small face towels
Wipes - Fun fact, we brought a big Costco packet of wipes to our former hoikuen and they gave it back to us with ⅓ of the wipes unused after 10 months!!! We go through a pack a week (at least) if our son is at home full time. One other mystery: There were no changing tables in his previous nursery...
5-6 diapers labeled with my son’s name
3 plastic bags labeled with my son’s name - these are used for dirty laundry. Our old hoikuen would return our used diapers for us to dispose of as well, but we’ve moved up in the world and don’t have to bring trash home with us anymore.
Bed sheet - we bring this on Monday and collect it on Friday. We had to find the exact size to fit this hoikuen’s kid futons, which unfortunately wasn’t the same size as the last school’s. Luckily, they’re cheap!
Hat
Extra pair of shoes

Because it’s summer, there is an additional packing list for water activities:

Swim diapers labeled with my son’s name
An extra change of clothes
A towel

The packing list is long, but not that much more extensive than what we were used to. The two final items are the “Rekrakuchou” (communication notebook) and the “Pool Card.” Every day we have to write our son’s temperature on the pool card, and give express permission via signature for him to enter the pool and the shower. The Renrakuchou is the real meat of hoikuen prep, and the thing I lose the most time to. What do we write in the renrakuchou? I’m glad you asked. Here’s an example page for one day. The left side is for the parents to record what happens at home, and the right side is for the teachers to record the school day.

An example page from our renrakchou. See my handwriting on the left side of the page and the teacher’s on the right.

To translate, we’re providing the following info on the left side/top of the page:

Today’s weather
Child’s mood
Poops - the time each poop took place and its consistency (the consistency is multiple choice)
Meals - the time at which he ate, what he ate, and how much he ate
Baths
Sleep - bedtime and wake up time
Temperature and the time we took the temperature
A written narrative including anything noteworthy about the child. This takes me forever to write, because uhh, Japanese. I usually have to think hard about what to say. “Last night he ate a big dinner because he loves blueberries and cheese,” is something I’ve written before.
Pick up time and the person picking him up

At the top of the page, we reiterate this info on a mini timeline using symbols to indicate his activities. See the key below:

Child’s daily timeline in the renrakuchou

The teachers record all the same info while our son is at school, and write a narrative about his day, which we read at home. Here’s an example of what the teachers write:

It’s good that he ate a lot! It's also great that he finally ate salmon. Today we were overjoyed because he ate all of his salad at lunch! We played mats in the room! He climbed the mountain we made, passed through a tunnel, rolled around, and moved his body a lot.

The teacher’s reports don’t always make full sense by the time I’m done translating them - it turns out it’s hard to decipher handwritten Japanese characters. Here are some flawed translations for your entertainment:

It's nice to have a lot of Japanese songs and American songs. I prepared water for playing in the water today. I enjoyed stroking, worshiping, and watching while smiling at the coldness of the water! When I put it in my room so that I could touch it, I felt cold when I put it on my face, and I was absorbed in playing with it by touching my face with a cold cow! I would like to try again!
It seems that I'm not good at vegetables in the garden (hoikuen), but I think I'm starting to eat more than before. I hope I can eat it little by little. Today, I was very excited to take a walk around the garden, find a garbage truck and a police car, and point my finger at the place. When I went to a nearby path, I was absorbed in searching for a butterfly while saying "Chocho! Chocho". I wasn't there today. After that, I drew a picture.

Hoikuen activities & culture

A copy of the hoikuen menu. Have you ever seen a tinier font size?

Our hoikuen has its own kitchen, which looks like a full sized restaurant operation. They give us a menu every month that includes a list of ingredients and nutritional info. They also have a display window in the lobby where they put every item on the menu for the day so parents can see it up close. Some examples of things our son eats (he actually eats it!): steamed pumpkin and sweet potato; red bean mochi; greenland halibut with stir-fried vegetables; furikake rice; burdock root; pan-fried tofu; japanese curry. Our former hoikuen had the tiniest kitchen I’ve ever seen, and all of the food was prepared offsite to be reheated. The food operation had an in-flight meal vibe to it, but the meals were still healthy :)

The display rendition of hoikuen lunch and snacks.

Kids in hoikuen throughout Japan are given brightly colored hats - usually each age group has it’s own color. If you go to a park on a weekday morning you will see clusters of tiny kids playing in matching hats. Transportation to the park is in square carts that the kids either stand or sit in depending on their age. Every hoikuen schedule (as far as I can tell) includes one of these outings in the morning, weather permitting. The kids play on playgrounds, blow bubbles, investigate the insect population, and play with different textures available in nature.

The two schools we’ve attended have a regular rotation of physical exercises. We learn about these through the monthly school newsletters. The schools also post photo albums on a password protected webpage. A note on security: hoikuen staff seem to go to great pains to protect children from prying eyes and unauthorized photography. Hoikuens have shaded or semi-opaque windows, and I was strictly monitored during my visits to ensure that none of the photos I took featured a child.

Our hoikuen in Yokohama was extremely small - probably the size of our apartment’s bedroom and bathroom combined. At first glance, it seemed impossible to run a daycare in such a tiny space, but the kids were super happy, followed the rules with shocking obedience, and laid down in neat little rows on the floor to take their naps. I’ve never before seen this kind of group harmony in a gaggle of toddlers.

Mysteries still hound us - why do we need to fill out a pool card every day in addition to the renraku notebook? Why did the hoikuen teachers ask us to switch to pull-up diapers when our son was only 14 months old? And I’ve read an article or two about the enormous pressure placed on Japanese mothers in general, and how the hoikuen system compounds the pressure with its unwavering attention to preparation and detail and rules. There have been many nights where I myself wonder what the eff happened to the one free hour I was going to use to write this blog post (for example) and realize I’ve been trying to decipher nursery school notes for 40 minutes. Obviously, Japanese speakers won’t have that challenge, but it does take time to read and fill out the notebook, regardless of your language skills.

All that being said, I feel appalled at how helpful this system is and how relatively unsupported we would be if we were in the U.S. right now. The quality of childcare here is high, and the teachers work really hard. I don’t know how they maintain the order, obedience, and positive environment I see in these schools, but I don’t need to know that to appreciated it. My hat is off to them, and I feel really lucky we’re able to send our son to a Japanese nursery school.

That’s all for now, more sometime soon!