It’s a proud time for J-List’s Yasu, the guy in charge of stocking cool artbooks and Japanese study items on the site: the oldest of his three daughters is starting first grade this April. He recently took her to a furniture store and had her choose a study desk so she can get into the proper habit of studying for several hours a day, since education is taken so seriously here. The desks themselves are well designed, made of higher quality wood than the desk I have at J-List, with many features like built-in lights for reading and many small drawers for kids to organize their study materials in. Another important choice for a new first-grader is what kind of school backpack to buy. School backpacks are called randoseru, from the Dutch word ranzel, and they’re extremely well made hard leather backpacks designed to hold everything the student needs over six years of elementary school. What’s amazing to me is how little this ceremony of putting one’s child on the road to being an industrious student changes from year to year, and when we bought the desks and backpacks for our own kids it was exactly the same as when my wife had entered the first grade so many decades before that.
It’s a rite of passage to buy a study desk and school backpack for your child in Japan.
