How Childcare Started

We are at the end of our journey with the Japanese childcare system, with our youngest child having graduated this month and getting ready for elementary school. This seems like a good point to reflect on our overall experience. Please note that this is my experience of hoikuen only, and I am not an expert on the system. 

What is hoikuen?

I have found the easiest translation for hoikuen is childcare. It's for preschool children, from babies through to 5 years old, to spend their days while their parents are otherwise occupied, often with work. Hoikuen should be differentiated from yochien, which is a kindergarten/preschool system for children from 3-5 years old. They are also overseen by different areas of government, with yochien being managed by the education department and hoikuen overseen by child welfare. 

Finding hoikuen

We applied for a hoikuen when our eldest child, our son, was a few months old. We set about seeking a place for him in January/February with an eye to starting out in April, when the new school year began. This was already a bit late - while we were still welcome to apply, a lot of the places got zapped up in November.

We are in Chiba where there’s still quite a high demand for hoikuen places, but it’s not quite as bad as I understand parts of Tokyo are. The hoikuen where my kids ended up spending the past 8 years combined wasn’t our first choice when we realized we would be needing one. In fact, we handed in a list of our top 9 preferences only for the man at the ward office to hand it back and ask for another 9. The hoikuen we ended up at was somewhere in that second list of names - so top eighteen, anyway. We applied quite late, originally, and my husband’s theory on how we got a place is that while the area where our hoikuen is located has a lot of apartment buildings/condos, it also a lot of stay-at-home parents.

Our hoikuen is run by a private company, but complies with government regulations and is subject to government requirements, thus falling under the category of ninka-hoikuen, 認可保育園. The ward office also takes responsibility managing places at hoikuen and determining who goes where. About halfway through my younger child's time there, the management changed from one company to another, which resulted in a few procedural changes but the overall system has remained the same.

The hoikuen is located near one of the major train lines, quite near where my husband works. This wasn't all that helpful for our first few years there, since I did the majority of hoikuen pick-ups and drop-offs hence it only being our top 18 hoikuen choices. That said, the proximity to the train line meant it was almost always on the way to wherever I was working on a given time. The convenience level increased markedly once I returned to full-time work and my husband did the drop offs.

Entering hoikuen

Having secured our son a place, we started out at hoikuen at the beginning of the school/business year in April, which is when the majority of children start out. We attended a brief meeting with the head of the hoikuen (enchosensei) in March, where we were introduced to the three carers, hoikushi, who would be tending to our son (while he rolled around jabbering on the floor). We were given an information booklet at that time, which contained all sorts of information about what to bring, the daily schedule, a daunting list of contagious illnesses and how much time he would need to be away from hoikuen, and so on.

Entrance Ceremony

I attended my son’s entrance ceremony at the start of that April; two years later, I attended my daughter’s hoikuen entrance ceremony at the same place/time. It was a short affair, featuring:

• A reading out of the list of the new entrants to hoikuen
• A welcome speech by the enchosensei
• A song - for my son, it was performed by the senseis themselves; when my daughter started, they had tasked the oldest kids at hoikuen with this instead.

On the way in, I was given a large paper bag which included things we had been expected to purchase for my children, including their colored hats (each age group has a different color), their recommended bibs (for the baby class only), a a communication notebook (renrakucho), and security card keys for my husband and myself to enter the building. Each of my children got a picture that was used to label their items throughout their whole time at hoikuen. My daughter’s group were using flowers and transportation, and she got a tulip (yes, it was divided by gender). My son’s group had animals and they made a point of showing me that they had assigned him a koala. I'm Australian and I think he was the only mixed-race child at hoikuen at the time, and I was - and still am - quite moved by this simple but kind gesture.

After the ceremony itself, the senseis took us to the room my child would be using, where the babies are. They gave us a tour of the room and showed us where and how this things would be stored.

Narashi-hoiku

Children don't typically jump straight into full-time childcare, but instead must undertake narashi-hoiku, where they attend for short periods of time in order to adjust. I don't know if the older hoikuen children (i.e. 3 year olds or older) need to do it as well, but it's definitely done with the younger children.

My son was supposed to do narashi-hoiku for a few days. On the first day, he attended for about 1 hour. On the second day, he attended for 2 hours. Then, he attended for a morning. This was all going pretty much to plan. If I recall correctly, he was supposed to do another morning, but we had (to avoid going off on a long and upsetting tangent) a family emergency and suddenly returned to Australia for 3 weeks, so we had to restart the whole process when we got back. 

My daughter was young when she started hoikuen and the dates I was supposed to return to work were later than the dates she was supposed to start hoikuen. She didn't exactly do narashi-hoikuen so much as sporadically attend hoikuen over a couple of months, progressively more often as time went on.

While neither of my children ended up doing narashi-hoiku exactly the way they were supposed to, I appreciate the logic behind it. It helps set everyone for a successful relationship and provides a way for the children - and parents! - to gradually get accustomed to hoikuen life.