There are probably two main big events in the life of a Japanese yochien (kindergarten) student: sports club day (undokai), and ongakkai, or their Christmas recital. It was great fun for our family to attend our first (of many to come!) school recitals. We were really impressed with what these teachers are able to do without assistance with a class of 28 four and five year olds! Here are a few snippets. It was fun to watch Owen sing out in Japanese (we cut off the video before the second verse because he didn’t seem to know that verse as well!)

The second song they did was all instrumental- it was so fun to watch these little ones! (Note: his little gestures reaching up at the end were all my fault…he was wearing shorts with suspenders that were too long and kept falling down under his jacket).

One last song- one that we didn’t know…

When he was done, we went to — Starbucks!! — to celebrate.