Hi everyone -
I've looked through pretty much everything but couldn't find any information about foreign kids in Junior High schools in Japan. My daughter is an 8th grader here in the US, and a family situation has come up that might require us to relocate to Japan and live with her grandparents in Tomakomai for at least a couple of years. It's a relatively small town in Hokkaido and there are no international schools there.
My daughter is half-Japanese so she can legally enter a local junior high. The major problem is, she was born and raised in the US and even though she knows hiragana, katakana and some basic kanji, her Japanese is very limited. She is not fluent in conversation and can only read or write very basic Japanese.
I have been trying hard to find any information from parents who moved with junior high kids but had no luck. Is it too late for foreign kids to enter the Japanese school system at this point? Has anyone done it? Did the kids have terrible time adjusting to life in Japan? Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I've looked through pretty much everything but couldn't find any information about foreign kids in Junior High schools in Japan. My daughter is an 8th grader here in the US, and a family situation has come up that might require us to relocate to Japan and live with her grandparents in Tomakomai for at least a couple of years. It's a relatively small town in Hokkaido and there are no international schools there.
My daughter is half-Japanese so she can legally enter a local junior high. The major problem is, she was born and raised in the US and even though she knows hiragana, katakana and some basic kanji, her Japanese is very limited. She is not fluent in conversation and can only read or write very basic Japanese.
I have been trying hard to find any information from parents who moved with junior high kids but had no luck. Is it too late for foreign kids to enter the Japanese school system at this point? Has anyone done it? Did the kids have terrible time adjusting to life in Japan? Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.