Expatriates in some countries face a scarcity of options when it comes to educating their children, but in Japan the reverse is true: The array of alternatives and the potential permutations of language, curriculum and environment can be utterly overwhelming.
Parents — especially in Tokyo — have access to flyers, magazine ads, online parenting Web sites and schools' own informational sites, plus a host of other informational sources. But out of sheer exhaustion many fall back on a familiar source of information: the grapevine. The grapevine, of course, has one major drawback: sour grapes.
Parents already desperately trying to educate their children are hardly trustworthy sources of neutral information. The wish to provide one's child with the best of everything can be compounded by the sense of vulnerability often felt by expats and, indeed, the feuding and competition over international school placings in Japan is legendary.