Shocking Facts about Japanese Childcare & Nursery Schools

sponsored by squarespace these are shocking facts about japanese child care [Music] so it's almost been a year and a half since we gave birth to our son wolfie and to say the least it's been amazing yet kind of hectic raising him here in japan and just a few weeks ago he started for the first time public japanese nursery school we've learned a lot about the process and experienced some pretty surprising and maybe shocking aspects about japanese child care and wanted to share all of that with you in this video but like always before i start if you want to see what i'm doing on the daily check out my instagram account if you want to help support the channel check out the shibuya merch and if you have any questions about japan or your japan travels then check out my discord community and i couldn't do this video alone so michael can you join me hi everyone okay michael so one thing to note before we start is that we're not familiar with how child care or nurseries work in your country but definitely let us know in the comments which you think is better or worse just to kind of give us some perspective so just a quick overview about child care in japan is pretty much broken up into two different categories you have yochien which is kindergarten and then you have huikan which is nursery school we are using huikuan because wolfie is one year old right now but technically is in zero years old class and pretty much if you want to go to a kindergarten or a yochien then you have to be usually like from three years old so our only option here in japan was to have him go to a nursery school the thing about nursery schools here in japan is that there are so many and um so many kinds types yeah let me just do a lot of studies still don't understand it yeah so here are just some of the examples so you have like nika huikoen which is a licensed nursery they're kind of broken up into public and private ones then you have koitsu mine hoikuen so it's a government-owned private nursery then you have ninja hoikuen which is authenticated nursery school everything else that's not approved or licensed is meaning in fact we're not using any of those license or unlicensed nurseries because we are using a nursery for kids on a whaling list because that one was closer to our house so basically we applied to one of those government sponsored nurseries and we had to wait to get rejected and this was kind of like our backup nursery and they let us in to this one and just like looking at this list still it's so confusing there's just so many no starting age so one of the things that was quite surprising to me about japan um maybe not to you since you're from japan is that nursery schools start at such a young age like from zero months right it's like they have that available so that moms can go back to work as quickly as possible it's not all over the world yeah but if you look at the percentages you can see that it's like over almost 12 percent uses it and then 33 is a one-year-old and then it goes all the way to 40 at 2 and then all the way to 87 that are using nursery or kindergarten by the time they're three years old i think at three kindergartens are offered free or like the entry is a lot easier than getting into liquid that's why the usage uh person like pops up so in terms of age you're like starting age i wanted to spend more time with wolfie but because of all the corona situation wolfie hasn't been encountering a lot of people in his life yeah and i think it's better for him to know more people see more people to learn or like to and you know process better yeah i mean i would take him to the park these days since we've like kept him inside this entire time and we haven't really taken him out when i do take him to the park instead of like playing in the sand or like running he's just like and he's just staring at kids and it's like he's like frozen stairs and i think that's one of the decisions why we wanted to to get him started i miss him so much now but for him nursery point system getting into a nursery especially if it is not private and its government authorized or sponsored or run there is a point system here in japan to like meet a certain like total in order to be accepted it's more like the point system prove that you need help like you need somebody's help to watch kids so you can't work or like you have to like take care of your parents or you are injured or you're sick that's the point system is there for basically they're saying that like the people who need it the most will get the support so like i think it's nice to like if you are disabled like you said or if you are like a single parent oh yeah you need help then they're gonna help you so first of all like you get points based on your working hours if you were working eight hours five days a week you get like 20 points if you're working eight hours four days a week 16 points i don't know i think it is fair especially for those people that like really need it in our case we need help because we are extremely busy like working 24 hours yeah but like you can only say you work more than eight hours five days a week that's the max that you can write down so if you work more than that you don't get no points the amount of hours you work doesn't give you any more points if you have grandparents living with you then you get less points they get minus get minus points but it's interesting because grandparents sometimes are even like more difficult to take care of it has to be like a healthy parent parents are living with you and another reason we're using the nursery we're using is if you can prove that you're using a child care facility then that's another point you need the proof from november to march if you don't have enough points and you want to like try to make up points there are like babysitters or like daycares that you can go to to earn the points which will cost you like 25 to 3500. a month for what like almost half a year so you have to actually like pay that much money to get into the system so there is a point total here which i thought was kind of surprising like oh man you actually have to meet like a certain criteria in order to get nursery and i'm like well how much does that really matter but in fact it really matters it really matters competition for applicants if you want to go through like one of the government um supported nurseries then you have to go through the point system but it's extremely affordable with the licensed level of service you can't get into a lot of schools and with like tokyo especially there's i think a limited amount of nurseries i mean there's like a ton of nurseries out there but still there's not enough to support the communities fees just to give people some reference to how inexpensive government versus like private ones like here's a list of prices monthly child care fees vary depending on the municipality but are based on the family's total income calculated by using the family's income tax as shown in this chart for kids under three years old it ranges from free to a max of about 700 per month but based on average family incomes in japan fees are usually around two hundred dollars or less per month for full-time child care including meals so what ends up happening is the working families that have two high income earners or maybe just like one really high income earner then they have to go to like private child care which is quite expensive i think twenty five hundred dollars to maybe thirty five hundred dollars per month that's why everyone wants to get into these like nursery schools that are government supported and we're lucky that we got it so before we continue on i want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor for this video squarespace if you don't already know then squarespace is the number one way to build your online presence in fact we use squarespace to build our site tokyo zebra here are just some of the reasons why we love using squarespace so much whether you're starting your passion project or building a business squarespace has all the tools to get it done while also looking ultra sleek and professional at the same time they support numerous portfolios and gallery designs which you can customize and even password protect so the right people see your work use its fully integrated blogging tools and commenting features such as threaded comments replies and likes to help engage your community and my favorite built-in analytics to see how your visits unique visitors and page views trend over time so there you go go to squarespace.com today for your free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com for paulo from tokyo and get 10 off your first domain or website all right let's continue on application the application process is so crazy this time i did everything which is easier for me to write japanese an application form in the application for me there's so much was it online or was it they changed the system from next year application maybe because of corona but before that you have to go into the ward office and you have to like book the session yeah so how many pages is it the stuff we have to fill out as freelancer one to seven pages which is not that much you think but it's just so much things you need to write down and you have to put a thought on it look at this one page this is the one that we need to fill out this year and in addition if you just found the job and then you need that shiro showmenshop to prove that you just got hired if you're looking for it then you need another paperwork if you are looking for giving birth you need the you know the show me shirt as well show me just don't you know what i'm saying document yeah like if you're handicapped you have to prove that as well there's like so many things that you like you have to like add to prove that you can get another point we don't have points that's why we don't have anything else to fill out the application process starts the end of november to get in in april that's when school year starts in japan and you actually get to apply again in february so basically what you're saying is that you have to apply six months in advance and if you get rejected then you have to fly again a second time two months in advance but you have like uh almost no chance because people have already yeah you can accept it but if someone says i don't want it then the person that has a higher point total they're like okay then right yeah but there are people like to only apply for the let's say like that a and went to the waiting list and going to our school then i'd say oh i'm not gonna go then this person's gonna go up not the person who accepted the third so since we're on the wait list if someone drops out then we would like to yes they'd like move us yeah and we have no say on say no we have to go oh i didn't even know that once you do get accepted then um they don't just like put you into the nursery they actually have you do this thing called it's kind of like a training for the nursery so you don't go full time right away you start off at minimum hours in our case we serve from two hours after that we upgrade to the lunch time and make sure that he can eat if he can't eat he can just go straight home and eat with us and then when he's used to it then he's gonna stay until the nap time and after he's used to it he's gonna stay until the snack time which is at three and then play a little bit and so forth so in our case we were supposed to do this for i called in all like two weeks yeah but just four days into it got sick and he has never gotten sick like he did going to nursery and i think it's kind of one of those accepted things once you start going to a nursery you're gonna just pick up lots of bacteria and viruses from other kids and we didn't expect to be out for almost two weeks michael looks at me like that because we had a rough couple of weeks i couldn't look at him like that another thing that was not bad but sad was like right after we started he got obsessed with me he was like mom mom he wasn't like that before then he got sick and it got even worse yeah so you do have to kind of expect that when they start their attitudes might change and he felt the brunt of it but i also felt like he hated me like i'd be like well if he come over here like i'd pick him up he'd be crying he's like mama mama is like just screaming like or he would try to get away from me so that's another thing you just need to expect but at the same time it is nice in japan that they do have this system where they don't just like fall in put you into a nursery and like that's where you like go and cry it out or you're just gonna have to deal with it they like slowly will walk you through it they were very accommodating so they're amazing yeah we were just really really impressed just be prepared that your kid might get sick things to prep once you do get accepted they're going to have a list of stuff for you that you know i didn't expect how detailed this list would be and how thorough our school is minimum because it's a temporary school but actual school will ask you like whole a lot i don't know if this is common in other places of the world but they had like okay you need to have a hat and the hat needs to have a rubber elastic band around it you have to have all of his shirts can't have any hoodies everything has to have his name written on it including all the diapers so you have to write eight to ten diapers every like other day you have to have a certain size of bag for a change of clothes because i think they hang it oh you need to bring a towel they use for sleeping but like some school ask you to bring up like a set of plutons a little mattress yeah and they bring back to wash every weekend another thing uh that was quite interesting was the naming convention for when you have to write your names on the kids clothes you have to be like a specific size like one centimeter size and you have to be in all kita ghana it has a really long i don't even know if his soccer has enough room to write all his names those of you that are international and that have longer names you just have to think about that security i think security is pretty standard i'm assuming from around the world i don't know so security wise you have to register mom and dad or whoever is like picking them up you have to like take a picture of their face id ids and everything only those registered people are able to pick them up and to actually get into the school they have like two locking mechanisms and stuff and they have intercom so only let in people that they know it just makes a lot of sense especially when you're dealing with kids and i'm assuming that's across the world i'm hoping at least security is pretty standard like a babysitter and grandma we have to register them in advance school knows who they are yeah and that you have to bring the id if you're not mom or dad to match i thought that was pretty high security but i don't know maybe not yeah let us know about that one nursery food another interesting thing i've kind of like touched on it before in my previous videos is like the food that they serve they have kind of set meals i think like they prioritize food education in japan a lot so they want you to like experience all the different like flavors and like very healthy like mindset towards food so thank you yeah so every day is different and generally they'll have like a set of different plates dishes like one plate with the rice and they'll probably have like two main or like little like main dishes then they'll have like soup and then maybe another side dish or something i wish that we had this because it's like just seemed so healthy well i had this type of food throughout the school year so i'm pretty used to it and like not every food is great yeah it really depends on the kids whether they like it yeah meatballs it really depends they do have snacks as well yeah they have snack time and in the morning and afternoon they are like different menus as well the last time i picked wolfie up it was like a yogurt and a fruit and like a pack of juice uh just we got a call earlier today and it looks like for the first time he eat all this food he's not full-time yet but he's getting there so i guess that's it for now that's kind of the surprising things that we've gone through experienced trying to deal with mommy okay all right so we just picked the wolfie up all right so that oh thank you oh all right so we are gonna end here spend some family time so those are some of the surprising aspects that we've experienced going through a japanese nursery let us know what you thought in the comments and if you guys want to see more videos like this or anything related to japan no if you guys want to see any more videos like this or anything related to japan hit that subscribe button and the button and we'll catch you guys in the next one [Music]

Channel: Paolo fromTOKYO

Views: 556,374

Keywords: Paolo, Japan, Japan guide, japanese culture, early childhood education, japanese kids, raising children in japan, japanese culture and traditions, school lunch in japan, japanese culture for kids, japanese nursery, japanese childcare, japanese nursery school, japanese kindergarten, childcare in japan, japanese culture shock, japanese education, japanese baby, raising kids in japan, shockig facts, japanese preschool, preschool in japan, houikuen, hoikuen in japan

Id: BnDPC2hhWAY

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021