Japan edition, part 1

I arrived in Japan on Friday at 11 p.m. local time.  That's my mother's birthday.  It's now 6:30 on Monday morning, so I've been here only while school is not in session.  But wait, in Japan, most students attend school on Saturday also, and walking through parts of Tokyo on Saturday I did see several children in school uniforms.

There are no charter schools in Japan, but there is a fledgling movement to bring them.  Shoji Sugita has written a little piece about bringing charters to Japan.  He's met with charter founders from the U.S., and describes here several charters that would like to open in Japan.  Hiroshi Ohashi, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo, has published a white paper on the topic also, which is here.  Looking to find information about Japanese charter schools, I also came across this charter school in Oregon, which seeks to serve Japanese and other students in that state on the Japanese model.