My Life in Tokyo

At the beginning of April, I finally did it: I enrolled Juliet in a Japanese preschool. I’m so glad that she has the opportunity to learn Japanese and it’s an interesting adventure for me, too, to be a part of a Japanese school. I still speak very little Japanese, so it can be a challenge at times. Noriko picks Juliet up from school and gives me messages from the teachers, and she translates the notes for me. If I have something important to tell them in the morning, I look it up beforehand and write it down (I still have to say it, however, since they can’t really read Japanese words written in Roman characters). So far it’s going smoothly.

I have found some of the routines of the Japanese preschool, called hoikuen, to be interesting and amusing. Here is the list of items Juliet needs to have at school each day:

- indoor shoes
All children wear these in school, including Isabella. This is how they keep the floors clean without having the kids running around in their sock feet. The shoes are kind of like Keds, lightweight white canvas sneakers.

- a smock, with elastic at the neck and wrists
To keep the children clean during lunch, as well as for art projects.

- a towel with a loop
Also a Japanese school staple. Every child has his or her own towel which they use every day and bring home to wash. No paper towels or hand dryers in the bathroom. Very frugal and environmentally friendly
(Note – public bathrooms here often have no towels, either. Most people carry a small towel or handkerchief in their pocket or purse and use it after handwashing.)

- a placemat
For lunch.

Everything had to be labelled with her name, in Japanese. I asked Noriko to do most of them so it would be as neat as possible, but I did label the backpack myself. Here’s what “Juliet” looks like in Katakana:

ジュリエット

(It is pronounced something like “Jurietto,” which is about as awkward in Japanese as it is in English. We have taken to calling her Juju at home, and that seems to be catching on at school as well. Even Juliet can say it, which is incredibly endearing.)

The new school year begins here on April 1, so it’s been about a month and a half now. Last week was their first outing: a picnic with all the 1- and 2-year-old classes at Shinjuku Gyoen, a large and very pretty park in Tokyo. It was a beautiful and very warm day and the children all seemed to have a good time. I found it to be very different from any of the outings I had done with Isabella in New York. Though it wasn’t strict or rigid, it was all carefully planned and everything was done together. I also noticed that all of the rest of the people I saw in the park that day were on some kind of group outing: children in matching uniforms, adults with matching ribbons pinned to their shirts, walking together or eating together or doing some organized group activity.

Here’s what the day looked like for our little ones:

When we arrived, we set up our picnic mats in a shady spot under some large trees. This is what a typical Japanese group picnic looks like:

Soon afterwards, we all stood in a circle to sing a song. I think it was their regular good-morning song. Then we sat down again to socialize and eat a snack. Then there was an organized game. Here’s what the 1-year-olds got to do: The teachers set up two long ribbons several meters apart, with a row of balls in between. The little ones stood behind the first ribbon, then walked to the middle and picked up a ball, and then walked on to the second ribbon.

It seemed just the right level of difficulty for the little ones, and they managed to do it with help. Juliet was very happy with her new ball.

There was more free time, for sitting on the mats or playing with the balls, and then the teachers rounded everyone up for a walk. I had no idea where we were going, and ended up carrying Juliet for quite a distance. We ended up on a bridge over a lily-pad covered pond that was inhabited by a large number of turtles. The teachers had bags of crackers and gave one to each child, to feed the turtles. (Juliet tried to eat hers first, and had to be gently coaxed to toss it over the side!) It took some time to ensure every child had a chance, as the bridge was small and the group pretty big. Finally, we moved on to a tree that they had hung with origami necklaces for the children to “discover.”

Finally we walked back to our shady tree to eat lunch. I had packed Juliet’s bento box with a cream cheese and jelly sandwich cut into small squares and I had some cut up fruit for us to share. My Japanese friend Mari had packed traditional lunches for herself and her daughter: rice in one compartment, and in the other, several separate tiny cooked foods–a rolled omelette, a hot dog cut to look like a squid, and a tiny piece of fried chicken. Yes, I asked–she cooked it all fresh that morning.

Here are Juliet and Mari’s daughter Mion, who have been friends since last fall in Gymboree and are now in the same preschool class together.

All in all, it was a nice day and an interesting experience. It is very clear how important group activities are to the Japanese. Group outings like this are common not just throughout school years but into adulthood as well, in the form of company outings. Although the planned activities were simple and age-appropriate, they were all carefully choreographed and everyone was expected to participate. It didn’t give me the feeling that behaving differently would be frowned upon; it simply seemed that it was not an option. I wonder if I would have the patience to endure years of these outings, if we were to live here for many years . . . .