According to an article in the Japan Times, one out of every thirty babies born in Japan had a non-Japanese parent. 19,000 babies had non-Japanese fathers, the majority being North and South Korean, followed by Chinese and Brazilian. 26,000 had non-Japanese mothers who were from China, the Philippines, and the Koreas respectively. 9,000 children were…
A poll done by Nepro Japan, a huge mobile products company, shows that 88% of people in Japan use their cell phones while in transit. Here is a link to the Japanese description of the poll (pdf). The sample of 4,614 people consisted of 41% male and 59% female respondents. 42% of the total were…
The reason I say easy big bucks in the title up there is because as the article “Cram School Caters to Kids Gunning for Harvard” because seriously… they are smart enough to accept only kids who are going to get in anyway, right? So they teach them some writing schools, maybe one of the teachers…
Here’s the scoop on the drama, just in case you don’t actually have a tv under the rock in Japan where you live… but maybe that’s too extreme. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Japan who don’t know about Gokusen. So here’s the ad for the show… if you’re even slightly interested, I…
So a kid got a capsule toy out of the vending machine here. The capsules toys are called “gashapon” in Japanese… you can find them everywhere. Some of them have interesting toys or balls, most of them are very disappointing. The kid, 2 years and 10 months old) got a ball out of a machine…
I’m referring to some news making the rounds in the Japanese media, one article about the shoplifting epidemic in Japan. (in Japanese) “Hon no Manbiki, Nenkan 40 oku-en” or “Book Shoplifting, 4 Billion yen a year” One quote at the bottom says it all, “People’s feelings toward shoplifting as a crime have thinned.” That is…
If you, like most of the major journalists in the U.S. (see my pop-Japanology posts), are under the mistaken impression that Japan is an unassuming, grin-and-bear-it type of society, here’s a great list of some of the things today’s Japanese parents are expecting from their kids’ preschools. “I’m busy in the mornings so the day…
The title says it all. Lately I’ve been spending most of my time working on my other blog which is a blog about raising children, education, and being a father – important things. BigDaddyJapan.com If you read Japanese and are interested in family related topics, please drop by.
A 53 year old teacher forced a girl to kneel on the floor and apologize in front of the class for having forgotten to give a notebook to one of her classmates. The teacher had asked the girl to deliver a notebook to a classmate who’d had to leave school early one day. This is…
There have already been a lot of stories this year, but I’m just starting on this theme today… I think counting these things will help people realize how big the problem is. For the most part, I’m only counting the articles in English too. If I see a really significant one in Japanese that doesn’t…
Male member of cheerleading squad at Meiji University (one of the highly rated private universities around Tokyo) among other members beaten by senior students… kills self. More sad news. Why do they have to beat people? I also think it should be easier for these kids to quit clubs. They get advised to stick it…
A student killed himself in a bathroom at school. Everyone around him seems to think it was “bullying” or ijime in Japanese, but the school will never admit it. If it’s determined that the cause is ijime, the school, teachers, guilty students, parents of the guilty students, and all the levels of school boards up…