That is a good idea @Shakebake71. I had not really thought about it. I would have to look into that to see if there is something in my area because I am not sure. The biggest issue with that though is that my wife is a pre-school teacher! So it’s already pretty settled where they will go…
But honestly, I would love to get my youngest ones into something like that. Even if it was just for a year. There is a possibility we will be moving back to California from Colorado (if we don’t make it to Japan right away) in which case I will have to re-evaluate that as an option because I am pretty confident I could find something like this in the area we would live in CA. Thanks!
I’ve gotta get to bed, but before I go I’ll just say that if you’ll be going to the San Diego area at all you’ll have a variety of good options open to you.
I’ll elaborate on this more soon, but here’s a teaser for now
I wish I were going to San Diego! Unfortunately, it would be the Sacramento area. San Diego would be my #1 choice of where to live in CA and I even have some friends there but it just has never worked out.
It looks like there is a Hoshuko in the Sacramento area.We are raising our two sons to speak Japanese first, even though we are not native speakers (wife is half Japanese and obaachan (native speaker) lives nearby). For us, this is really only possible because we have access to Japanese preschools, Hoshuko as well as obaachan here in the Seattle area.
At every opportunity, we seek out Japanese resources (Japanese soccer coach, Japanese babysitter, Japanese TV, Japanese library books etc) and it really has paid off. We actively spend a ton of our non-work time improving our Japanese (love Wani Kani!) and, as the administrator put it at our Hoshuko interview, we will be in a constant race with our first son as he charges ahead in Hoshuko. I’m up for it, however, and I really like doing his homework with him…it helps me too! Reading and re-reading (Japanese) children’s books is great practice and you learn a wide variety of vocabulary! Though we have spent time in Japan, we’re unlikely to relocate there, so this is an effort that we’re making from afar, in an effort to cultivate a cultural and linguistic connection between our kids and their heritage. That said, we’re hoping to do some month-long stints in Japan, enrolling the boys in school there during that time. (This is a common thing for Hoshuko kids, as the Japanese summer break is shorter than the American one, leaving one month that American kids are out of school but Japanese school is in session.)
Anyway, if you have access to local resources to help and the energy to make it a big part of your lifestyle, you can see results. We still have a lot of work to do, but I’m amazed at how successful we’ve been thus far. がんばって！
Do you have any particular Japanese children’s books that you and the kids both enjoy? I’d love to hear specific titles! (There aren’t any Japanese bookstores in my area, so I can’t really go and browse, but if I know titles I could try to order them online.)
That’s so cute! I was surprised and delighted to hear Elmo’s voice and Cookie Monster’s voice (Cookie Monster sounds like it’s changed a bit since I was a kid). It was part English! XD
Haha, that is totally me, too. In either case, thank you for sharing. What an interesting way to teach your daughter! That “bored of it” may come sooner than 10 years old. Girls are pretty smart. She may have an attitude and tell you and your wife you’re weird for being like that at home by the time she’s seven. Who knows! I volunteer with kids aged 5-13, and yeah… some of the 7 year old girls have really big attitudes about all kinds of things, it’s kind of hilarious. : D Or she may just think it’s totally normal, and go with it until she moves out as an adult. Who really can say?
I wish you the best with this endeavour, and also hope to hear more of this progress in the future! ^^
(I have no kids myself… although I kind of think of some of the kids I volunteer with, especially the older ones that I’ve known for the past 5 years, as “my kids”.)
Jason,
4 year old girl who thinks she is a cat, likes most animals, pink, princesses; those are her preferences, but she’s usually not too picky when it comes to books
7 year old boy likes inventions and silly stuff (e.g. Dr. Seuss), also word play and jokes, games, gardening; he tends to choose non-fiction books when we’re at the library
I also have a 10 yo daughter, but I doubt she would let me read to her, and she’s not ready to read anything in Japanese on her own, so I’m planning to focus on speaking with her after she gets out of school this summer.
Our sons are 1.5 and 5.5. We’ve read to them almost exclusively in Japanese from birth, though the older one’s English is getting pretty good. As such, some of my suggestions will probably skew a little young and be more appropriate for the 4 year old than for your older kids. The following books are all parts of different series that we like. The アニメ絵本 books like トトロ are probably the ones that will last you the longest in terms of challenge for the kids. The バムとケロ books are probably the silliest. The だるまちゃん books are pretty legendary as the author has been putting them out intermittently for something like fifty years. The vehicle books in the series with ピン・ポン・バス are particularly good for the vehicle-obsessed like our youngest.
So, these are all jumping-off points for different series that we like. If you end up liking any one of these, there are several more related to it that you can expand.
It feels a little like show and tell in grade school (^______^). But first, a question: Do you know if any of the ones you listed here have a board book version as well? My 2 year old is still too rough with her belongings to go through a book without “modifying” it significantly.
And now for an unsolicited list!:
あそぼうよ （おとうさんといっしょ） This was her first-ever 絵本。 It’s really a superb activity book for very little ones.
どうよう （ちゅーりっぷ） For any of y’all that go all-in when it comes to 童謡, this series helps keep the magic going when the screens are off!
いいおかお （いただきます） This one just drives getting down the context for when to say 「いただきます」. Straight forward.
いないいないばあ あそび For y’all that have read my previous posts, keep my bias in mind, but here it is: I think this one is golden for very little ones because I believe that it is easier to teach an infant/toddler to play いないいないばあ than to teach them to play peekaboo. You may notice, as I have, that for very little ones who like to play peekaboo they can only do the “boo” part for some time, due to the articulatory complexity of the “peekaboo” segment. It has three different vowels, has three syllables, and is often modeled by parents as being said rather fast.
In contrast, いないいないばあ can be done both fast or slow with no loss in emphasis, is comparably phonetically simple, and it is easy for little ones to initiate and conduct the entire game without any attempts to make a “bridge”.
My wife would play peekaboo with her and I would do いないいないばあ. She took to いないいないばあ right away and could properly reproduce what I modeled for her almost instantly. Everyone in the household, even briefly, does いないいないばあ with her now.
おいしいな！ This one’s just delightful and genuinely sweet (not sweetsy)
のりもの （はっけんずかん） This one is bursting with info. If your little person is bursting with curiosity about 乗り物 you can’t go wrong with one like this. Lots of fun flaps!
Thanks for reading (and hopefully watching!).
If any of y’all have any 絵本 you love please jump in and share!
好きな絵本のことを知らせて頂戴！
Hey Jason, thank you for the information. Sorry it took so long for me to respond. I’ve just been really busy this weekend.
I will have to check out that school if/when I go to the Sacramento area. Do these schools take kids that have zero Japanese heritage? It kind of sounds like that is who they are geared towards but I would love to be able to do something like that with my kids, especially because I DO plan on relocating to Japan at some point. This would give them the good head start that they need.
bmore84, Hoshuko here only accepts Kingergarteners (and up) who speak Japanese. We had a three part interview (our son solo with a teacher, our son in a small group with four other kids plus teacher, and ourselves plus obaachan with the administrator). Everything was conducted in Japanese. Still, look into it; there may be other schools that are a better on-ramp for your kids and the Hoshuko folks could point you in the right direction.
@JasonM17 The three part-interview gauntlet sounds tough!
Do you remember what each of the interviews were like or what kind of questions they asked? The one with おばあさま sounds particularly demanding; I don’t really yet have a native speaker in my corner like that.
Thanks for the additional recommendations. The あそぼうよ and どうよう books look like they’re from the same author as the かぐやひめ book I listed above, which is a board book. The illustrator/author, いもと ようこ, is very prolific. We have several board books from her in this style, such as うらしまたろう, ももたろう, おむすびころりん, 3びきのこぶた etc. Those are the only board books among the stuff I listed above. The Japanese translation of Very Hungry Caterpillar (はらぺこあおむし) is a board book that we’ve gotten a lot of use out of.
The のりもの book with the flaps looks awesome for our youngest. I’ll have to check that one out.
We’ve borrowed the いないいないばあ あそび book you list and others from that series from the library; there are several of those which generally focus on things like greetings and potty training. They’re very short and I’m glad we’ve been able to borrow them rather than buy them.
We didn’t get a very detailed description of the kids’ interviews from our son, but his first language is Japanese and he is a very good reader so I’m not surprised he did well; our only worry there was whether he would just have an “off day” which kids obviously do sometimes. As for the grown-ups’ interview with the administrator, it was a combination of them wanting to understand our motivations and how much we expose the kids to Japanese culture (very easy to do in Seattle) as well as letting us know that this was going to be a challenging multi-year commitment that the whole family would be making. Apparently our answers were satisfactory because he (we) got in.
The thing to realize about Hoshuko is that its purpose is to provide a mechanism for children of Japanese nationals working abroad to reintegrate back into the Japanese school system upon return to Japan. As such, it is taken quite seriously by all involved and isn’t just a fun extracurricular activity that kids take on like music or sports lessons.
There may well be less high-stakes options (like pre-schools that might serve as a way to prep for Hoshuko) in a given area; you’ll need to do some research to figure out the options.
Some information for those on this thread who are thinking of moving to Japan with kids.
Really love the bestlivingjapan site, and we use it all the time for activities and things to do, and they also have a lot of general information for families in Japan.
Anyway…they have a series of articles on education and also a little on the interview process for Yochien.
I will say our son’s interview process for Yochien was pretty simple (he was 3 at the time), but we did some coaching in advance. i.e. what is your name, how old, favorite color, favorite food, etc…
Things we thought that Sensei would ask him in Japanese.
But, we also have friends at other schools, where the interview process was pretty rigid and strict and competition to get in the school was tough.
takeshitakeda and Jason, thanks for sharing the book lists. I haven’t time to follow the links or post any of my own yet, but I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your taking the time to give recommendations.
So it’s already pretty settled where they will go…