We will be turning in our daughter’s application and getting interviewed at our desired yochien next week. Just wondering what your yochien application process was like. Even better, what the interview was like. Would like to have an idea on what to expect so my family can prepare best. Thank you!
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I did it like 1 month ago but wasn’t interview… was more like, how much it cost, what they do, the procedure to go in, events in a year, food (bento), not use diaper and probably to go in ( like for 8 applications 1 go in) .
For us was like if both parent works , plans to work, how long we want he to stay (if both start working ) . Pretty simple .
Not directly related to the topic but just curious – I saw some people in this sub refer to the Japanese kindergarten as yochien instead of just kindergarten. Why? Is it that fundamentally different from kindergartens elsewhere?
Sat down with the teacher and sub teacher. They wanted to check my kid wasn’t the devil and that we were monster parents. All over in 10 minutes.
If it’s one of those juken or through train yochien, it might be pretty formal. We got asked questions like… what is the significance of your child’s name, what is the educational policy in your household, etc… And had to wear suits
Interview? We were checking THEM out, not seeing if we qualified. We narrowed it down to five places, then went to their open day events and decided on our favorite. They all looked at me like, “You’re going to be our Santa Claus,” but I only ended up doing it once.
Ours was fairly casual and short— maybe 10 minutes. They asked our kid her name, favorite color, and saw if she could follow some basic origami instructions (lol, we had never done that with her, she couldn’t do it really).
After that we all waited in the hall together and then the principal came out and said everyone passed (13 students, space for like 20). Then gave us all the administrative info as and we went home.
Our yochien is not competitive. I hear that the really competitive ones are even tough to get an application for!
Brought mine yesterday morning for my kid. Actually i was asking the questions not them lmao.
Your kid should be able to do basic aisatsu, answer a few basic questions like what their name is, how they came to the interview that day (by car/train/on foot), what colour/food/animal they like. That was basically it for us. To us, they just asked us a few general questions about our family, basic conversation.
As someone who used to interview the families and kids, a lot of it was seeing the parents (and if they seemed difficult) and the kids behavior.
Usually, we’d have an interview with both the parents and kids together and then separate them (just a few meters away but a wall between them) to see what the kid is like. I’d usually stay with the kid and do some sort of craft and check their ability to follow directions, hold crayons, etc.
We were *slightly* competitive so if a kid or parent seemed too difficult to deal with then we’d deny them.
I think one time there was a family that basically had no rules and the kid was quite difficult. We had concerns about safety and the parents not wanting to discipline their child so we denied them.
It’s more orientation than interview. They just explain the facilities, cost, and the like.
Interview was just checking that he could sit down, ask him about things in a picture book, a couple of simple Japanese questions, and that was it. My son hardly speaks Japanese (we’ve been focusing on English at home) and he passed without any issues. I’m pretty sure it’s just to check that the kid doesn’t have any special needs or serious behavioural issues.