
Japan's independent kids [video] - augustocallejas
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/520489027747/japans-independent-kids-the-feed
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jackvalentine
To bookend this, a family member who lectures at a Japanese university has to
endure "parent teacher" meetings for her twenty-one year old students.

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michaelbuddy
based on what I've heard about universities there this surprises me, unless
it's teacher's business to help get students a job there shouldn't really be
much to have interventions over.

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Animats
That's a tough commute to school. The kid isn't just taking a train. The kid
has to take the Yamanote line, one of Tokyo's busiest lines, and change at
Shinjuku station, the world's busiest transport hub.

Japan has very low speed limits in dense areas: 40km/h in cities, 30km/h on
side streets. That reduces the risk to pedestrians a lot.

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Mithaldu
Japan also has two things the USA doesn't: High density, resulting in low
walking distances between important points; and a very good public transit
system, reducing walking distances even more. Both of these contribute a lot
to minimizing child/car interaction, in addition to the strict traffic laws.

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michaelbuddy
sorry but kids walk a pretty good distance to school. high density doesn't
mean school is down the block, plus some school is based on your skill level
not your distance from, so you may be in the upper public school across town
because you did so well. What Japan has is a lot more responsibility and
empathy at crosswalks. They are used to traffic and respectful of others.
Selfishness leads to speeding, mistakes which leads to crashes.

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Mithaldu
You underestimate just how _low_ density many parts of the USA are:
[https://www.google.de/maps/@41.5585724,-87.6995585,6409m/dat...](https://www.google.de/maps/@41.5585724,-87.6995585,6409m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)

In that area without parents driving their kids around, it would mean many
kilometers of walking, due to the lack of public transit.

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wmaiouiru
I wonder if kids in NYC are also taking trains to school like kids in Tokyo.
On a separate note, growing up in Japan, the concept of renrakumou (telephone
contact graph) was quite interesting. When there is something important from
school announcement, people on this graph would traverse down the tree and
contact the node to spread the word.
[http://oshirase.x0.com/jpg/templtes/renrakumou.jpg](http://oshirase.x0.com/jpg/templtes/renrakumou.jpg)

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superuser2
These graphs were a staple of emergency procedures in the pre-Internet era.
Still are in some places. My mom was a teacher; this is how school closings
worked.

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0grr
..two minutes in and queue the white guy in a kimono giving social commentary
on Japanese culture.

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michaelbuddy
yeahh that looked pretty cheesy but it's more of a comfortable summer clothes
he's got on I thought, not actually a man's dress kimono or anything. He's a
writer too so it's like he's just hanging around the house in his pajamas

