How They Live: The Japanese Daycare Experience

All daycares are not alike. Some corral the kids like lost puppies at the RSPCA, others have a day to day agenda not unlike an academically driven primary school. But how do the daycare differ from others around the globe? Writer Yumiko Ono shared her daughter’s daycare experience in Tokyo, Japan in a piece she penned for the Wall Street Journal.

Here are some interesting tidbits and examples about how the Japanese daycare system is run.

• The public daycare  fees don’t exceed $650 a month in Tokyo for kids under three. Half are run publicly while the rest are managed by private groups. In major US cities, daycare costs an average $917 a month.

• Each day, when they arrive at the school they note in a log book the body tempature of the child to make sure the kid isn’t afflicted with any illness.

• The day’s highlights are noted in journal such as the entry, "She stretched out her legs in the pool and pretended to be an alligator,"

• At the end of the day, parents pick up their children’s things as well as the soiled nappies “each rolled up and marked with her name, await in a basket.”

• And we’re not the only country with preschool and daycare being as competitive to get into as a decent college. Getting that “coveted slot requires patience and strategy.”  Yeah, we know that one all too well!

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