

Ask HN: Are you from Japan? - jmtame

I found something out today that seemed interesting, and wasn't sure if it was representative of all Japan.  In this book I'm reading, it says that at the age of 6, most children in Japan are expected to become independent from their parents (if your parents are taking you to 1st grade, it is considered weird.. as a 6 year old, you should know buses, subways, etc).  This usually doesn't happen until about age 24 in the US.<p>Is this representative of most of Japan?  Anyone from Japan have any comments on this?  Once you reach 21 or 24, what are you typically doing?  (this is not really hacker news, so feel free to flag, but I was mostly curious to know... I'm mostly interested in Japanese culture through the book about Yukichi Fukuzawa, who was fairly entrepreneurial)
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patio11
Yes, it is considered normal for a Japanese child in elementary school to get
themselves to and from school.

For the first few years they typically travel in gigantic groups with an adult
chaperone -- think of it like meeting your schoolbus at the corner, except the
bus is a bunch of people walking together. After that, they'll mostly be
biking to school alone or in small groups.

Factors which make this more common than the U.S: hyper-secure streets,
availability of public transportation (it isn't unusual in my neck of the
woods for home and school to be separated by a 30 minute train ride), hyper-
secure public transportation, and a good lump of inertia. (How many
institutions like that really change, when you think about it. The U.S. still
has a summer vacation so that kids _can help Mom and Dad on the farm_ , for
Pete's sake.)

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netcan
I think this issue is a great example of something. We defend what we are used
to. Desperately.

When we see a 2-4 yr difference in either direction over what we allow our
kids to do, we are generally appalled. "He's 15 & can't take a bus!?" "She let
an 11 yr old take the train herself!?"

An interesting trend I've seen between myself & my brother (12 yrs Junior) is
that he & his friends seem to have slightly less desire for freedom. Sure they
are annoyed when they're limited, but it comes up less frequently. I think a
lot of it comes down to video games, internet & such. What they do with
friends, it's mostly at home. We were never home at 10-15 yrs. Nothing to do
at home. So most days we went out with friends. We naturally hit more
resistance from parents who had a harder time tracking where we were. It also
highlighted who had more or less freedom. Our parents got used to us being
'gone' as 11 year olds. Now it feels like kids are at one house or another,
easier to track. Cell Phones help. In my particular world, I think many things
have moved 2-3 years older.

When I was a child, I lived in the US. We had no freedom at all. One reason
was crime rates, particularly random crime rates which are the thing that
really contributes to your feeling of safety. Another major factor was
geography. Couldn't walk anywhere in those sprawling US cities. Kids had to be
driven to school. Friends lived far away, etc.

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pavel_lishin
I grew up in Moscow, Russia, and was taking the bus and subway by myself from
quite an early age; I left there at 10, so it must have been several years
before then.

(I know it's not Japan, but wanted to point out that this was done even in
what some might consider to be a western-yet-scary part of the world.)

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kqr2
When I visited Japan, I remember these very young school kids getting on the
subway by themselves. They were all wearing school uniforms with bright yellow
hats and were holding hands when they went on the subway together. One of them
also had this "emergency" alarm she could pull if something went wrong.

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gojomo
Age 24?!?

Urban teens in the US often take public transit on their own to school or
other destinations. Suburban teens (~16+) often drive themselves wherever they
want to go, sometimes in a car they effectively own themselves.

Even younger children sometimes also take unaccompanied public transit trips,
especially in smaller, more family-oriented cities and towns, or in groups.
Children under 10 in many places walk or ride bicycles on their own to school,
stores, and events.

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RK
Yes, but at what age do they move out of their parents' homes?

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lionhearted
Japan is a lot safer than almost anywhere else in the world, so you get
preteen kids from Yokohama going to hang out in Tokyo. That'd be a bit like
some 12 year old American kids going to "hang out in Manhattan" - with no
detailed plan, supervision, etc.

But largely socially emancipated at six years old? I don't think so. Maybe
somewhere between 8 and 12, which is a few years younger than a lot of places,
but nothing crazy.

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ramchip
I'd add that 24 feels a bit old to me for the american number. I've been
living on my own since I'm 18, and I started taking the city bus by myself to
go around when I was 13 or so. This isn't exceptional at all among the people
around me (Quebec).

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think the sad thing is that there are spoiled teenagers in America who don't
truly become independent until well into their twenties. But that's like
rumors of America's obesity - yes, there may be a problem there, but we aren't
literally drowning in basement-dwelling twenty year olds or other people's
flab.

