August 20th, 2009 | 
Author: 
A Japanese middle school
Do you think paying for your University costs are expensive? Then wait until you get a load of the education costs in Japan. The following are the average costs of schooling when converted from yen to USD:
-Kindergarten (3 years – public): 7,943 USD
-Kindergarten (3 years – private): 17,536 USD
-Elementary (6 years – public): 21,798 USD
-Elementary (6 years – private): 89,675 USD
-Junior High (3 years – public): 15,392 USD
-Junior High (3 years – private): 41,360 USD
-High School (3 years – public): 16, 995 USD
-High school (3 years – private): 34,078 USD
-Total for all public (15 years): 62,130 USD
-Total for all private (15 years): 182,651 USD
I don’t know about you, but I could never afford for my kids (if I had any) to attend school! The only way I could do it would be to squeak by on eating ramen everyday (and not the good ramen mind you, but the packaged store-bought stuff).
For those of you that have decided to live in Japan in the future and raise a family, would these type of expenses cause you to change your plan?
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Can you provide a source for these numbers?
Admin edit:
Yes, but I’m sorry they’re in Japanese!
Source 1 and
Source 2
I am now within sight of finishing paying for (some of) these costs. Our oldest daughter has a decent job (for a change). and our youngest is a 2nd year, private univ. student.
Thanks for the source, it looks like the original report is here: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/001/006/07120312.htm
If you look at the data you’ll see that the majority of costs come from “external costs”, which include such things as: school commutation, tutoring fees, cram school tuition, test fees, music lessons and equiptment costs, sports club and equiptment costs, entrance and travel costs for libararies, museums and zoos, reference books, computers, even bookshelves and desks.
So these numbers should not be mistaken for tuition. Rather they are an estimate of the total cost when raising a child of anything involving or related to education.