Yochien Junior Graduation

At the end of March Beatrix graduated from Chirrupu (Tulip) class at her yochien (kindergarten) called Sakuranoseibo.  One parent was allowed to attend.

After an opening ceremony everyone broke up into classrooms.  I was struck at the ceremony how different Beatrix looked form all the other kids.  At the start of the year Calista was attending and so was another girl from base who had blonde hair like Beatrix.  Calista left, and that girl moved.  So Beatrix was the only child I saw without dark hair.  Things are going to be so different for her when we move away from Japan

Beatrix does have friends in her class and school.  I love seeing her play with the other kids.

Here she is with a friend and her teachers.

The two friends she always talks about are Annie-chung and Sabrina-chung.  They both have one American parent and speak English and Japanese.  I wonder how Beatrix found them and how long it took them to learn that B-chung can only understand them when they speak English.  Do bilingual 3-year-olds even know they speak two different languages?  Did Beatrix notice that she could understand them sometimes and gravitate toward them?  Or did they hear her speaking English and then respond to her in English?

I do see other kids and her teachers speaking to her in Japanese, but I'm not sure she understands.  Her teachers claim she does and I have noticed her saying a few Japanese phrases here and there at home.  But I also know it would be easy for her to just copy the other kids and she might not really understand.

Now that she graduated, she is in the Lily class, which is Calista's old class.  She was in the red hat class but now her class wears blue hats.  

I am grateful that she gets to go to a Japanese school.