Kids in Japan lead carefree "be home by dark" lives up until late middle school and high school, when they start studying 4+hrs/day and sleeping <5hrs/night to prep for standardized tests. I don't think Japan is a horrific dystopia for teens but it's hardly the "let kids be kids" culture that America of yesteryear (apparently) was.

Helping raise a teenager in Japan, it is pretty close to a dystopia. The idea that students could have free time seems to be frightening to the whole education system.

I wrote a big sibling post, but I wanted to just point out that schools do tend to use up student's time. Students are required to enter a club and often these clubs are 6 days a week, so compared to the west, students have no individual free time. I know many (most) western parents think this is awful, but most of the students I had loved club and never wanted to go home (we had to turn the lights off at the tennis courts and even then some students would try to play in the dark!)

Some students hate club and we had clubs for students that hated club (unfortunately the English club was one of them). They show up for an hour a week and go home. It depends on the principal, though. Some principals are very much opposed to that idea, so if you don't want your kids to spend a lot of time at school it pays to investigate schools that will accomodate you. I will admit that I like Japanese schools and find them dramatically better than anything else I've experienced, so I'm biased.

Our teenager is not into sports. The school only offers one non-sport club, the culture club, but, in the words of the principal "it is only for people who have a handicap and can't go to a sports club." I was appalled. We asked if club membership is mandatory, we got a very Japanese answer "It is not mandatory but everyone does it, please do it too"

I remember, discussing with the head of the kendo club why she was into kendo, she said she was not really into it. She could not answer why she chose it or spends so much time there. I think acceptance and resignation are things that are taught very early in the Japanese education system. And don't get me started on the sempai/kohai system that just normalizes peer pressure and a generational hierarchy. I have seen people in their 60s still obeying their one year older sempai!

I did not like the school system I went through in France, but almost every thing I disliked is magnified in Japan. Yeah, the students clean up their classrooms and the admins do their paperwork correctly that's about all I see as advantages. All the rest is about formatting perfect wage slaves with no room fro creativity or self-search.

Don't get me wrong. I completely understand your frustration (or I think I do anyway). It's a very cultural thing. Many of the Brazilians in my area hate the Japanese school system too. The Japanese school system is great at indoctrinating people into the Japanese culture. It instills certain societal values -- many of which are just not shared by people who didn't grow up here. However, it does quite a good job at that -- to the point where if I was raising kids in Japan and I thought my kids would likely remain in Japan as adults, I think it would be a very great injustice to deprive them of Japanese schools.

I can read your message and understand how you feel. Japan is a hard place to live in as a foreigner. The culture is not like a buffet. You can't take the bits you like and leave the other bits aside. This is especially challenging if you are raising kids, since the school system is going to instill Japanese values in your kids whether you like it or not. A few people have asked me if they should raise kids here and I think it's totally great, but only if you are ready to buy into the Japanese culture completely. If not, it's going to be -- as you put it: appalling.

My wife is Japanese, I thought at first like that, that our son should have a taste of the education system as I'd like him to have both cultures. I am starting to revise that judgement. The culture of obedience and resignation seems diametrically opposed to some notions of the French culture.

Indeed, you need to get the Japanese culture completely and uncompromisingly to see what the schools here "teach" in a positive way. However the Japanese culture is about more than just submission and obedience, the other parts, I am fine with, but I am not going to leave my son in a system that considers imagination and critical thinking like deviance.

> The culture of obedience and resignation seems diametrically opposed to some notions of the French culture.

My parents lived in France for a while and still revere parts of French culture, so I'm familiar with it. Honestly I can't imagine having to reconcile that with Japanese culture. I'm often surprised, though, because French people in general seem to do well in Japan -- especially compared to Americans or British people. Anyway, I feel for your situation. It can't be easy. I hope you find a path that works out for you!

There is a very strange attraction between Japanese and French. A lot of people in both countries magnify each other culture. I think it is partly due to projection but also to a long history of collaboration and exchanges.

It is ridiculously easy to be a French in Japan. A lot of people immediately become very friendly to me when they learn where I am from.

Also, there's one thing I'll concede to Japanese culture: they do take food seriously here! That's also a strong shared point.

What didn't you like about the school system in France? I rather liked that tests tended to be mostly essay or problem based with just a few questions to work through and show creative thinking and not multiple choice tests like in so many countries.

I do like Japanese education in primary school from what I've seen so far and I will probably enrol my kids in a Japanese primary school instead of an international French school when the time comes

From what I hear in other countries, the school system in France is not too bad in comparison.

I think I dislike school in general as I think many of the concepts it is based on are outdated and should be improved. Fixed, imposed curriculum over the year with fixed, determined schedule on subjects. No collaboration between students, just competition. Arbitrary rules and authority bestowed upon random adults. Grades that are geared towards establishing a hierarchy rather than helping progress. Lack of interactivity and experimentation, etc...

Since I read more about it, I see France is pretty correct in comparison, with Japan being a conceptual opposite of what I think ideal.

I'll probably leave my son in primary in Japan, but I don't think it is a good idea after that.

> Kids in Japan lead carefree "be home by dark" lives up until late middle school and high school, when they start studying 4+hrs/day and sleeping <5hrs/night to prep for standardized tests.

In my experience the same's true for upper-middle class Americans.

I've never heard of anything outside of a few edge cases doing anything like that here. It's definitely not the norm for upper-middle class kids.

> Kids in Japan lead carefree "be home by dark" lives up until late middle school and high school, when they start studying 4+hrs/day and sleeping <5hrs/night to prep for standardized tests. I don't think Japan is a horrific dystopia for teens but it's hardly the "let kids be kids" culture that America of yesteryear (apparently) was.

I think that time of Japanese kids' life is actually when they are the most free, they can goof off and do pretty much whatever they want as long inside and outside of school and no one will bother them (parents and teachers likewise), as long as their test scores are OK, that's one of the reasons that 15 is considered the start of the "best years of your life" (seishun).

Actually from what i read, it's not childhood..it's college.

Once they are in college, they've made it. It's over. And college in general is not as vital as in the usa, because the Japanese hire the person not the projects or the knowledge. College is a breather between cram hell and salaried life.

It's easy to get led into thinking this is ubiquitous, but it really isn't. Life gets difficult for school children around year 3 min middle school (about grade 9). The long and the short of it is that if you want to get a really top job, then you need to come from a top university, which means that you usually need to come from a top highschool, which means that you must get a good mark on your high school entrance example.

Lately it's gotten even a bit more difficult because you are allowed to apply for only 1 public high school and one private high school (unlike the UK, "public" and "private" refers to what you would normally think -- public is publicly funded and private is privately funded). You can always pay your way into a top school if you have enough money, but generally if you want to get in you need a good result on your entrance exam.

Here's the thing most people don't understand: most students don't care. And by most, I mean about 80%. Only 1/4 of high schools are high performing high schools where students are expected to go on to university. Even with that, most students will prefer to go to a high school that is close to them or where their friends are going. Only a few students choose (or are pushed by their parents) to go to the really top schools.

Even with low level schools, you can still make it to a respectable university. The school I taught in is one of the lowest public schools in the prefecture (one year, due to lack of enrollment, we accepted students who scored 0 on the entrance exam! Seriously, you have to be trying to get zero!) However, we usually sent 4 or 5 students to Nagoya university, which is a decent university. Several of my students when to Shizuoka university too -- which is not a great university, but definitely good enough to get a good job in Shizuoka prefecture.

At low level school, students do not study. I mean, a few study because they like studying, but never once did my students do their homework! Students are carefree, happy and energetic. Compared to the highschools I went to in Canada (I moved around a bit), it is absolutely night and day. It's like comparing prison to a holiday camp.

At high level schools, it's really, really hard work and students stay late to study every day (usually coming home around 8 pm). However, the vast majority of the students like studying! And even if you somehow get pushed into a top level school, every school has a kind of "escape hatch" where you basically decide "academics are not for me -- I'm going to become a factory worker".

This is not to say that there isn't pressure to succeed, but the reputation Japanese schools have is completely undeserved.

And to get to the normal argument: what about suicide rates. We can compare suicide rates by age group in Japan [1] and the US [2]. For Japan under 24 (2014) the number is 1814 (0.0000143 per capita) and for the US (2016) it is 6159 (0.0000190). In other words the US youth suicide rate is about 25% higher than Japan's (Why does Japan have a reputation for high suicide rate? Because older people commit suicide -- it is very rare for young people to do so).

[1] (pdf) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

[2] (scroll down to table) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States

> because you are allowed to apply for only 1 public high school and one private high school

Let's say it how it is: this is a gift to private schools at the expense of the poors' education. Private schools are expensive but always have some room left.

Here is how it works: you can only register at ONE public school (that is, a school that will not have prohibitive costs). You can play safe by choosing a low tier one or take a risk at choosing a high ranking one. Thing is, if you fail, you only have very expensive schools left, so most poor families will just skip that part of education or only register their kids to a "safe" high school with low scores. There is not a single good reason to not allow two or three fallback choices.

> never once did my students do their homework!

I am assuming you were teaching in a juku or another kind of additional education. If so, it could be because your homeworks were not mandatory and the school already had given them enough to fill 4 hours of work.

"the reputation Japanese schools have is completely undeserved."

I am not sure the reputation they have in US. French tend to think Japanese schools are good, I was appalled at what I discovered.

I was teaching in a low level public high school. To be fair, the entrance exam system is complicated and I don't fully understand all of the details, but I'll try to elaborate some more.

Essentially you are allowed to apply for 1 public and 1 private high school. Unlike most places in the west, public high schools still cost money in Japan. It's quite expensive: something like $1000 per student per month. However, the government helps you out if you are low income, or if you have multiple children -- so essentially it's affordable, though expensive for everyone. Private high schools can have higher prices, but not always. So it's not necessarily the case that a private high school is much more expensive than a public high school, especially if you are middle class and only have 1 child.

I think the main reason for the 1 choice only was that it used to be that students would write many exams and then pick the best high school they qualified for. What the new system does is make it so you have to strategise a bit: you can apply for a higher level private school (maybe aiming for a scholarship) while applying for a lower level public school. The main result is that students tend to lower their sights to ensure that they get in.

However, there are caveats: What happens if a student doesn't pass either of their exams? What happens if the student doesn't pass their public exam, but can't afford the private school? So there are extra exams. Essentially, the schools pick the students that they want, but leave some spaces open. Then they do another exam and fill up the remaining spaces. So there is always a possibility that you will get accepted in the second round. Access to education at the high school level is assured, so if you totally screw things up, you will still go to school -- but you may go to some random school.

Anyway, it really is the case that students as low level high schools don't study, generally! I don't know how old your child is. You said teenager and given your story about required sports club, that's almost certainly junior high school. Sometimes if you live in a very rural area with only a small school, then you can also be stuck with what you are stuck with. But if your child enrolls in a school that is aiming the students towards trades, or factory work, the academic expectations are practically zero. If you enroll in a school with the goal of going to university, then the expectations a very high. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Japanese students do not go to university -- it's very different than the west. Usually they will go to a kind of junior college (like 2 year dental assistant program), or a trade school, or they will go straight to work.

In my school (which had about 750 students when I taught there), 50% went straight on to work. Normally the number of students going on to university I could count on my fingers (and sometimes only on one hand). In my area there are 4 high schools. 3 of them are similar to the one I taught in. Only 1 has students who are expected to go on to university. This is totally normal here.

The vast majority of high school students in Japan have an easy time of it. You child may not, especially if you expect them to go on to further education.

Yes, countryside area, teenager (my niece, not daughter) went back to Tokyo for high school because, indeed, she is aiming at something else than cashier at a kombini or waiter in a restaurant (which is what her brother did after failing university)

Japan is a country with the highest amount of bullshit jobs I have seen. I will agree happily that it is better than the homelessness that seems rampant in countries with high inequalities, but that's still a failure of the educative system.

"I think the main reason for the 1 choice only was that it used to be that students would write many exams and then pick the best high school they qualified for." Yes, and what is wrong with that?

"The main result is that students tend to lower their sights to ensure that they get in." Especially if their parents can't afford a good private school as a backup plan. It may be different where you are, but when we explored the options around Tokyo, private schools were more expensive.

Indeed, you can go after to one of the public school that still has slots left, but that is not your choice, that's a situation where you go "ok, I guess I'll learn bakery then" because you did not score well at one miserable test in your life. That's a ridiculous system.

"something like $1000 per student per month" The one we found, which is apparently one of the best public school in Tokyo is closer to $1000 to $3000 a year: http://www.kokusai-h.metro.tokyo.jp/en/school/expenses.html and I heard similar prices in other public schools.

Cheers for that. I don't have kids, so I was going on what friends told me they spent. It's easy to get those things wrong.

> It's easy to get led into thinking this is ubiquitous, but it really isn't. Life gets difficult for school children around year 3 min middle school (about grade 9). The long and the short of it is that if you want to get a really top job, then you need to come from a top university, which means that you usually need to come from a top highschool, which means that you must get a good mark on your high school entrance example.

There are no fairly reliable, widely known alternative routes to the top jobs? In the US you can go to Directional State U and top jobs are mostly not barred to you. It’ll be very, very hard to get a job at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs but it’s possible. Even if you went to the University of Northwest Texas grad school washes you clean of all plebeian stain. Harvard Business School or Yale Law School opens the same doors whether you went to a good university or not.

More generally who the hell do Google, Siemens or LVMH hire in Japan if all the good jobs go to graduates of Todai who expect to work at the same Japanese company for life?

It's one of the difficult things about Japan. All very high end jobs are jobs for life in Japan, pretty much. Your university supervisor has contacts. You get your job from those contacts. There are very few other ways around it. In IT, it's a bit different -- for example, I think it's pretty easy to get a job at Line. I've heard Rakuten only hires foreigners, but I'm not sure about that. I don't know if any of these employees are shokunin (fulltime employees, essentially for life), but if you are used to western IT then the year by year contracts are probably fine anyway. A company really needs to look after a shokunin for life -- they even give them a big lump sum retirement gift when they retire and may even do more for them later.

I good example of a shokunin is a friend of mine who works for a fibre optics company. The company hires x number of people from her university every year. She started there wrapping cables (even though she's an electrical engineer with a very impressive academic record). Eventually after she learned about the company and worked in various departments, she was given managerial role and she will work as one of the elite people in the company for the rest of her career. After she retires, the company will look out for her. For example, my wife's uncle was a manager at Suzuki and they gave him some land near the factory so that he could build a house and retire. That kind of thing is pretty common.

If you miss the boat, your chances at being a shokunin at a large company are pretty much zero. I mean, it still happens if you have good contacts, but it's essentially impossible. Your best bet is to find a small company and get a yearly contract and just be the best employee ever. Then if the company grows, you might become a shokunin.

But you can still have a good career without being one of the elites. Hell, it's the same for me working for western companies. I'm never going to be CTO of some company or VP of software. I don't care. It limits my ability to make money, but I like being on the ground writing software. I don't think I could even be principle architect somewhere because I just don't want to think about the big picture. I like details.

So even if you go to a lower level school and get a lower level position somewhere, it's completely fine. I think that's the thing that people miss -- you can still have a good career and make a reasonable living. It's just that you are very unlikely to be on the elevator to being VP at Honda without coming from a big name university. Again, it happens from time to time, but it's just super unlikely.

I think this is more of an adult's problem. The transition from kids to teens and adults is awkward everywhere, but it's particularly bad in Japan, as they're pretty much coerced and funneled into the workaholic (and misogynistic) society. But when kids are being kids, they're fine.

> (and misogynistic) society

This word is becoming way over-used (and thus losing its meaning).

There are real misogynists and real misogynistic behaviour; I can think of a prominent media identity in my own country who is definitely a misogynist. But misogyny is not simple sexism; it is active hating and dislike of women, and words and actions that show you hold them in complete contempt. I don't think that word can be applied across any society; it's an individual pathology, not a cultural pattern.

Also in Japan, and we feel comfortable letting our 5 year old roam around the neighborhood on his own. And when he starts 1st grade he will walk to school with his friends.

The only thing that really scares me here are cars. People tend to drive a little too fast in residential areas IMO. Especially delivery trucks... although at least you can hear them coming from far away.

Completely agree, cars are the main thing that worry me as well (in the city).

I remember meeting a young French dude that camped his way around Japan, even in the cities.

In my home city in the US, you couldn't even walk in downtown after dark.

This is going too far. I've lived and spent time in various USA cities: LA, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Denver, etc. I never had any difficulty walking downtown after dark.

I dont know about Boston or Dallas, but in LA and Chicago there are definetly areas downtown you should not walk around, especially LA.

LA and Chicago have some really bad areas, but also some safe ones.

Memphis, Houston, NO, St Louis, Baltimore etc have some crazy high crime neighborhoods, and it used to be worse. Murder rates higher than the worst places in the world. Not even places like Afghanistan come close.

ITT we're discussing the safety of downtown areas. Of the cities you mention, let's take St. Louis, since it has a remarkably high murder rate. [0] (Although if I'm reading correctly I think that link is using total murders from the whole metro area but just the population of the city proper...) An adult white man still has no problem walking around its downtown areas at night. That isn't to say that there is no crime, but crime levels downtown aren't high enough to make one live one's life differently. As is typical in USA, murders are highest in particular neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of many decades of racist policies. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

[1] https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/focused...

> I never had any difficulty walking downtown after dark.

You weren't a teen in [0] 1978 NYC... specifically the south Bronx. I was (though not from there although I lived just a short drive away) and street raced a bit in that area (you were Not ever going to get pulled over for speeding).. dude that was a fkin dangerous place back then; literally-- packs of wild dogs roamed the streets, and people who wanted to rob you and maybe worse didn't bother to hide. No way in hell you could walk through there and not get messed up, even if you were armed. Seriously.

[0] https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/08/07/the-rise-and-fall-of...

You are talking about very large cities only. How about most of the U.S. with smaller cities and towns?

Small cities are the worst. Witnesses are the best protection against crime, but there is no one out after 8:30 in the evening. You could unload a dead body from a van and when it's found the following morning no one could tell where it came from.

Living in what is certainly considered a small city (or even smaller than that), not a lot of dead bodies lying around in the morning left by random crime rings...

The person they replied to said you can't walk around "downtown". In my experience that's a term only used in/for large cities. Smaller cities and towns don't really have CBDs.

Every small town in the south has a "downtown". Often it's the old area of town built up around the railroad tracks.

It's a pure creation of the media, which has spent the better part of 50 years terrifying parents with panic after panic. The reality is that crime is much lower today and yet we are more afraid of crime than ever.

In the past,. being victimized by crime was expected. Now it's prevented. That's progress.

If there was any actual causal connection between the fear and safety sure. Instead it was irrational from both directions of not caring in the past about things like stupidly dangerous 50s toys to freaking out about kids playing in backyards unsupervised.

Ironically safety of children seems to be the complete opposite of the direction of the 'increased safety boosts risk taking'. When children have a higher rate of mortality they tolerate risks more but when there is a lower one they become more paranoid. I suspect the reason why is that most people have a terrible innate sense of statistics and probability - as shown by the success of gambling institutions like Las Vegas and the lotto.

I am from Brazil and here it is very accurate, I am 31 and my own childhood was already like what the article described...

And seriously, it is causing lots and lots of pain now in my adult life.

Apples and oranges. Japan is one of the safest countries in the world.

-

Murder rate (per year per 100,000 inhabitants)

Japan: 0.20

USA: 5.30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

-

Rape rate (number of rape incidents per 100,000 citizens)

Japan: 1.0

USA: 27.3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics

This is a common response, but I reject it. The over-protection in the U.S. goes way beyond actually protecting kids from violent crime. It's rooted in some kind of pathological paranoia. Even with its low crime rate, I think it could hit Japan in exactly the same way.

If Japanese kids have a one in a billion chance of being hit by a meteorite, and US kids have a ten times higher rate, does that mean the US is justified in requiring kids to wear meteorite resistant helmets at all times?

This hardly matters because both of these types of crime usually happen within the family, not by the hand of strangers.

[0] murder: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf (page 16)

[1] rape: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc...

Stats-wise, it would be best for the kids to stay clear of their family ;)

There's a lot of discussion in the Wikipedia article saying that you can't compare rates internationally. Please be a bit more careful with statistics.

That intrigued me. Why one can't compare rates internationally? I think we can and that what rates are for, aren't they?

These are "police recorded numbers".

In England police recorded numbers for crime are not seen as statistically sound.

> In January 2014 the UK Statistics Authority published an assessment of ONS crime statistics. It found that statistics based on police recorded crime data, having been assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, were found not to meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.

We can't compare the numbers between Japan and the US because we don't know what definition of rape is being used in each country (and for the US that definition is different for every state).

We don't know if there are cultural things that change how many people report a rape to police. We don't know if police record every report.

Here's a Human Rights Watch article about problems with the Japanese justice system's approach to rape and sexual violence: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/07/29/japans-not-so-secret-sha...

> and (I hear) Europe as well

From what I’ve seen in Germany, not much seems to have changed since I was a kid.

Some French lady ten years ago got into a big mess because she parked her stroller out in front of a coffee shop and went inside. Cops and CPS took her baby away for a couple of weeks/months.

As I remember it, it was a Danish, not French, woman. I don’t think they had the baby for that long, the embassy intervened pretty quickly.

You are correct and it's 20 years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/26/anette-soren...

To be fair, I don't think Japan is exactly a good model to bring up here. Kids are independent with their free time, but most of their free time is taken up having to study seven days a week while dealing with absent parents having to work long hours and a grueling school system that is part of the reason why Japan has such a high suicide rate among youths.

Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America and is what I think our school system is turning into. We're already working longer hours for less pay and increasing pressure on children to perform well even in Kindergarten.

> Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America

Sorry, as a parent in Japan, I beg to disagree. The system here has lots of problems, don't get me wrong - and I really don't like the "juku" (cram-school) model at all. But particularly at younger ages (which in many ways are the most important ones), there is still that fundamental freedom to be on your own with your friends.

Kids age as young as 5 are often out on their own with their friends outside, or walking to school, etc. That's something you would be arrested for in the U.S.

I see the North American situation as much more scary, TBH.

Well Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai are similar when it comes to kid going out. But the childhood is still under siege in these places by constant pressure to excel with lots of extra curricular classes. My close friends kids in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing spend most of their time in extra tutoring or music or painting or dance classes or something else where they have to excel. They have very little time left to just play and learn social skills. During some free time, they spend time in self-absorbing mobile or online games.

So I don't think Asian cities fair better than North America or Europe. It's a global problem. Two kids seating in front of reach other talking via instant messanger or in-game chat.

> My close friends kids in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing spend most of their time in extra tutoring or music or painting or dance classes or something else where they have to excel.

Of course this happens, but let me return to my point: it's perfectly normal to see a 5-year-old in the park on their own (here in Japan). In the U.S., the parent would be arrested.

Don't try to convince me that those are the same, they clearly are not. Pressure on kids, etc. varies by social strata, city/country, etc. But the degree to which it has been institutionalized, accepted, etc in North America is very different, and I would argue pathological.

Please stop spreading falsehoods about America.

It's a rare thing, but it is a thing:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...

https://geekdad.com/2015/01/kids-play-arrested/

https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-s...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parent...

I didn't even have to dig to find these, they're from the first page of results of a single Google search.

Counterpointing myself though, in the third link you can see reference to active pushback against this whole thing: http://www.freerangekids.com/

Thanks, and to respond to another sibling comment: this may be rare in statistical terms, but it is more than real enough to motivate a very clear pattern of behaviour among parents (not allowing kids to roam freely, etc)

I speak from experience having had people (including family) be shocked at how free our kids are here in Japan versus the experience in North America. Whether the media are making things worse (probably) is besides the point: you can get arrested for this as a parent. That's completely absurd and would not even be understood (let alone accepted) in many other countries, including Japan.

I have enough ties to USA and looking at the kids of majority of my childhood friends I can say for sure that they are similar or better off than an average Asian kids who spend majority of time not playing outside but immersed in school homework or extra tutoring activities.

The pressure in Asia builds even before pre-school where toddlers have lessons to attend, to get into a decent pre-school.

Anecdotal evidence to see some 5 year kids playing in playground alone in Asia doesn't prove the point that parents in Asia are not robbing their kids of their childhood.

USA is big multi-cultural place with many different parenting styles. Painting all of them with broad brush without statistical significant studies is not ok.

One might not get arrested in Japan, does not prove anything. I might not agree completely with USA system, but it must have a reason to exist.

Sorry, we'll just have to agree to disagree. I live in Japan, so I'm speaking from direct daily experience with a local school system (not international school).

But I completely disagree with your statements about "Asia", as if all countries are the same. Let's at least be specific about which countries you're talking about, and what direct experience you have with those countries.

I make no claims beyond my local context, and North America (with which I have contact through family/friends).

Yes I agree to disagree. Canada is North America and is not the same as you described.

Also you must be aware that USA laws are quite complex with different state and federal laws. Moreover it's a constantly evolving common law jurisdiction. So the rules related to parenting have a clear reason for existence and might change in future. It does not make the kids worse off than other countries as each has their own problems.

Also in Asia I am talking about cities mentioned in my earlier post. Country or region is just too broad a brush to stereotype, even in Japan Sapporo is very different from Tokyo.

I'm Canadian, I used "North America" because I wanted to include Canada. Not in reference to "arrests" but in reference to attitudes about giving children freedom, which are very similar in my experience.

> Country or region is just too broad a brush to stereotype, even in Japan Sapporo is very different from Tokyo.

I agree about stereotyping. But seriously: even Sapporo (which as a rare relatively new Japanese city has similarities to modern western cities) is much more similar to Tokyo than it is to, say, any North American city.

My point is not about whether laws are what where, but that attitudes are in line with those laws (and are what gave rise to them).

Read other comments in response to the post, and you see many other people referencing experiences similar to what I'm talking about.

I'm not trying to say Japan doesn't have problems (it does). Just that on this specific point, Western countries are heading in a very bad direction IMHO.

> USA is big multi-cultural place with many different parenting styles. Painting all of them with broad brush without statistical significant studies is not ok.

The same applies to "Asia"

Its not unheard of. My friend had cops called on him by neighbors because kids where playing "unattended" by themselves in the front yard! This caused lots of trouble for the family, incl. potentially loosing custody - its insane!

> Kids age as young as 5 are often out on their own with their friends outside, or walking to school, etc. That's something you would be arrested for in the U.S.

Do you mean "until age 5"? All of the kids I knew from that area of the world, as young as elementary school, spent every second either studying for school or practicing piano/violin.

I'm guessing you knew upper middle class kids from over-achieving parents. Normal Japanese children don't do that. Generally speaking, elementary kids are running around on those 2 wheel wobbly skateboards (not sure what they are called), or playing baseball or basketball (around where I live basketball is surprisingly popular). Right now it is summer vacation and across the road my neighbour's kids are yelling at each other like normal ;-)

No, I mean what I wrote, "as young as 5".

> All of the kids I knew from that area of the world, as young as elementary school, spent every second either studying for school or practicing piano/violin.

Sorry, but "that area of the world" is way too broad. Korea, for example, is quite different from Japan. And in any case, it's dependent on the cross-section of society you're talking about.

Elementary school itself, for example, is not suffocating at all, from my experience. Too much homework, yes, but not to the point that kids have no free time.

But again, my point is not about the amount of work. It's about the freedom to be on their own.