Financial education for young children is expanding in Japan to enhance their understanding of money, prompted by compulsory requirements in high school and the reduction of the age of adulthood from 20 to 18.
The need comes as opportunities to handle cash decrease with the spread of electronic payments, and as adults worry about how to develop their children's "money sense." Teachers, meanwhile, are turning to familiar games and recreations to help get the message across.
In late May, students played a card game in a class of fifth-graders at the Kamakura Elementary School, attached to Yokohama National University in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture. Pupils were divided into groups of four to five and instructed to indicate what they determined to be more valuable, an "object" or "behavior" from randomly picked cards.