Moving to Japan as a family with young kids – Education choices

6 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Moving to Japan as a family with young kids – Education choices**

   Hello all,

   I am an American citizen with a Japanese wife, and we are considering relocating out of the US and moving back to Japan. We’ve lived there previously as well, but since coming to the US we have started a family and our kids are now 6 and 9 (born in the US, both have US+Japanese citizenship).

   I work at a tech company and can work anywhere, so the logistics shouldn’t be a problem, but I was curious what anyone in a similar situation is doing for their kids’ education? Specifically, my wife is very strongly advocating for international school for both kids. I think this might be a necessary 100% condition for her. This seems like a great option to myself as well, but my main concern is the cost, and I just wanted to make sure we explored all our alternatives and options here.

   I’ve talked to a few other random colleagues who are in a similar boat as our family, and everyone else I know is sending their kids to a standard Japanese public school.

   Some more context:

   I can speak Japanese fluently and we’ve tried very hard to make our kids bilingual; I’d say we’ve succeeded so far. We raised our kids in Japanese first and continue to send them to 日本語補習校 on Saturdays. They attend a US public elementary school where they have learned English. Our son speaks English totally fine, and our daughter is good but not 100% on English yet.

   Also, we want to leave things “open” for the future; we are thinking that an ideal outcome would be that the kids to go to a strong American university when they graduate. We are thinking that when my son and daughter graduate highschool, we would all move back to the US as a family as they start university here. There’s some weird timing things to consider here, for example my daughter is two and a half years younger than my son, so we’d likely move when she’s 16 and she would finish the last two years of HS in the US. Also, our kids have their own will of course, so there’s no guarantee that they will choose a university in the US, etc.

   One more thing: we’ve gotten a recommendation that we should seek out schools with IB curriculums since they are well regarded. My wife is originally from Sendai and we really like it there, and we’d originally considered Sendai as an option to move back to, but there’s only one international school there, and it is not an “IB” school, so that option is no longer on the table, I believe.

   *Deep breathe*

   So, questions…

   * What do people think of international schools vs Japanese public/private schools? I’m thinking about education quality / ability to maintain English language on the side / anything else I could be missing.

   * Is a good public school or a good private school + some sort of on-the-side English programs (+ full English environment at home) a reasonable alternative here?

   * Has anyone else teetered between these different options? If so, what did you do and why?

   * For anyone that _did_ end up sending their kids to an international school (or going to one themselves, even!), how was your experience? And, how important did you find the IB distinction to be?

   * Are there any options I’m failing to consider that are reasonable? (example: enroll the kids in public until middle school or school and then switch to international school, or vice-versa, etc)

   Thanks so much!

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2. personally, i’d go for Cambridge over IB

3. >we are thinking that an ideal outcome would be that the kids to go to a strong American university when they graduate.

   In that case an international school will be the ideal option, especially if you want them to maintain their English language.

   If your children are good at reading the air, it may be an option to go to a local elementary school and then join an international school from middle school, but children tend to lose their English ability pretty quickly.

4. I don’t have kids so I can’t speak to that, but as someone who works in a public school here, I can say that at least in my prefecture, there are public schools (mainly SHS but also JHS) that have international programs, idk if they’re IB or anything, but the kids in those programs all have very good English. There are also a lot of mixed kids in my school, and those who have both parents in the picture all are totally bilingual, so it’s absolutely possible.

   Also, as far as the costs for real international schools go, I know they can be *very* expensive. Here’s the yearly tuition cost for ASIJ, a very popular school in Tokyo. I’m sure there are also other costs, like uniforms, supplies, trips, food, etc.

   Nursery–Pre-K: ¥2,735,000
   Kinder–Grade 5: ¥2,855,000
   Grade 6–8: ¥2,963,000
   Grade 9–12: ¥3,015,000

5. I attended international school in Tokyo & then went to university in the states. I attended both IB & AP international schools in Tokyo, prefer AP for sure but IB also has its perks. Here is my take:

   Generally all the good English international schools are going to be in Tokyo, and the international student community is also most vibrant there. You’ll find generally 3 systems: UK/IB/AP (American). I wouldn’t recommend UK since your kids likely won’t attend a UK university. IB is the most well known worldwide. AP will be easy for your daughter to transition into an American highschool later on.

   In Tokyo, there are quite a few IB schools to choose from (some are middle school & younger only with feeder programs to other high schools). Your son will only have one option for an AP school which is the American school, whereas your daughter could attend the all-girls AP school (ISSH).

   It’s not ideal to send your kids to a Japanese school for full education if you intend for them to study at a US college, because their English just won’t be up to par for American standards (& if you’re daughter intends to study in HS in the states, it’s gonna be difficult).

   I knew quite a few kids who did attend Japanese elementary school & then transfer to an international school for middle & highschool. One of them ended up going to Tufts. This might be a good alternative so they grow up essentially bilingual speaking wise.

6. >I work at a tech company and can work anywhere, so the logistics shouldn’t be a problem

   Have you actually confirmed this with your company? Unless your company has a Japanese business unit you would transfer to or would be setting up an employer of record, there are a whole mountain of legal and taxation liabilities that this opens the company up to. If they have not had their legal team review it and give you explicit written approval, I wouldn’t count on this being possible.