OUR regular column from Bromley Cross lass Danielle Hayes who lives in Japan. She is based on the beautiful city of Kyoto and teaches English.

WALKING through the train station on my way to work, it’s not uncommon for me to cross paths with numerous children on their way home from school, all alone.

How old were you when you were first allowed to make that journey on your own? I was in Year 5, at least 10-years-old, and I didn’t get my own house key until Year 7. In Japan, kids are travelling alone from a much younger age. You will often see children of about five or six passing through the ticket gates, or walking along the street with their friends on their way home.

There is even a popular Japanese TV Show called “Hajimete no Otsukai” which follows children, sometimes as young as two-years-old, as they are sent out on their first solo errand run for their family.

Japan, as I’ve mentioned before, is and extremely safe country. Last year, crime rates dropped to a new post-war low. Because of this, parents feel comfortable enough to allow their kids much more freedom than we would back here in the UK. Anthropologists believe that because children are given responsibility in schools at an early age, they feel more confident having responsibility in the ‘real world’.

In Japan, there are no cleaners inside schools —the children clean the schools themselves. Every day, each class is responsible for their own classroom, and then they take turns being responsible for the communal areas. This also goes for serving food, classes work to a rota and share the responsibility.

The children you see using public transport in Japan are always very well mannered. They usually stand up until the train leaves the station, and then start looking for any empty seats. They even have special train cards, so when they swipe through the ticket gates, you hear a little bird chirping. Still no idea why, it’s fairly obvious that they’re children, but it is very cute!

Would you ever let your kids take public transport alone here in the UK? A lot of Japanese parents say they would never let their kids go solo in England or America; only Japan - so you wouldn’t be alone!

To read more about life in Japan and the cultural differences between here and there, visit www.geekgirlgoes.com