Name: Day in the Life of a Japanese Elementary School w/ Only 8 Students
Uploaded: 2025-08-01T18:21:43.000Z
Duration: 30 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is a day in the life of a Japanese elementary school with eight students.

Today is a typical Japanese school day for the Shirasaka family and the three kids are all just waking up.

They live in a small city called Soshi in Kagoshima, Japan, which is where their mom grew up.

They have a very spacious 4LDK house, a lot bigger than the average Japanese house you'd see in the city.

A definite advantage living in the countryside.

Oh no, it seems like Aru can't find the socks she wants to wear.

Apparently, all three kids have their own room, but the other two want to sleep with their mom still.

Now the three kids have breakfast together.

It's pretty common to eat bread these days in Japan, but their family usually eats a Japanese-style breakfast with rice and miso soup.

After breakfast, Rukia walks the dog with his dad.

Oh, Aru is finally done with his breakfast.

They have time before school, so the kids take turns practicing the piano.

While mom does Aru's hair, dad cleans up the kitchen.

Interestingly, in Japan, piano used to be the most popular lesson for elementary school kids, followed by Japanese calligraphy.

However, the popular trend in the last few decades has been swimming classes, with English lessons coming in second.

It's usually between ¥10,000 to ¥15,000, about $66 to $100 monthly per child.

Oh, that's a traditional Japanese school backpack called randoseru.

It's fairly rigid and designed to fit A4-sized books without bending them, making it ideal for young kids to carry their own books comfortably.

While public schools never officially mandated its purchase, it's become so customary that all school children use one to ensure that they don't send out from their classmates.

So the kids usually meet up with their classmates and walk together to school while their grandfather accompanies them.

It's common for Japanese kids in the neighborhood to commute as a group, usually assigned by school.

Different grades are mixed together so big kids watch over the little ones.

And it looks like they're already having fun.

I've been wanting to do this video for such a long time, and we finally got permission to do it.

So the kids walk 2 kilometers, about 1.2 miles to school every morning, which takes them about 30 to 35 minutes, a little more than the average for Japanese elementary school students taking 24 minutes.

I guess they're waiting for another student.

So this is Kojin Shogako, the public elementary school that the kids attend.

It's a typical Japanese school, but with only 8 students enrolled.

These numbers concerningly becoming less uncommon throughout Japan's countryside with declining populations.

With so few students, almost half of the school, which has received a special accreditation to even allow students from other districts to enroll to be taught by their 11 teachers.

Before going inside, the students must change into their uwabaki, in-room shoes, typical for Japanese schools, which helps maintain a clean school facility while also protecting their feet.

Now the students separate to their assigned classrooms.

Rui's in a combination class of 1st and 2nd grade, all students with their own desks.

Usually in Japan, each grade will have multiple classes of 20 to 30 kids, but with so few students, this school is forced to adjust.

The students have about 30 minutes before the start of their morning homeroom, so each student performs their assigned duty called toban in Japanese, and these two are assigned to take care of the school's rabbits.

Now that all the students are finished with their morning duties, they use the rest of the time to play, running around, jumping rope, and anything else that they feel like.

At 8.15, the students have their morning homeroom in their own class.

Soshi City's declining population and birth rate is not independent, but something that the entire nation is experiencing, worsening year after year.

Not having enough government support for affordable childcare, parental leave, and childbirth encouragement are just some of the issues that Japan must face in the future ahead.

Every morning before class begins, both students and teachers clean the school together.

Today, they're cleaning away the fallen leaves on the school grounds.

This typical morning ritual not only maintains the school's cleanliness, but also cultivates a strong sense of teamwork and builds cooperation skills while also setting a positive tone for the day ahead.

So cleaning the school is common in Japan?

In Japan, students are taught to always wash their hands a custom dating back more than a thousand years as a proactive approach to health and hygiene.

At 8.45, finally first period starts, but it kind of feels like school already started a while ago.

In the first and second grade classroom, the students study kokugo,

To make it fun and engaging, they teach the kids in a theater-style format which the kids seem to enjoy.

So it looks like they're going to be doing this for a little bit longer, so while they're doing that, let's go upgrade.

Okay, so let's see what else is going on in the other class.

Okay, so I think this is the 3rd and 4th grade class right here.

They're also studying Japanese language using their tablets, and today focusing on Muromachi, directly translated Roman alphabet.

In Japan, over 96% of schools today use tablets in the classroom, a significant change in the last 5 years following the introduction of the Giga School concept an initiative by the government which provides one tablet per student and setup of their network environment in order to help Japan's lagging students catch up with the world in information and communication technology education.

Airi is in the middle of her music class learning the Japanese music scale.