Summer 2023: 7-yr old solo flight to Japan, and local school temp entrance

 Last year Summer we took an advantage of American schools' longer Summer vacation, taking 2 boys to Japan, stayed there for a month, had them go to the local schools that I went to when I was a child. That worked quite well language/culture-wise, Japanese familiarity of 2 boys was boosted. This year, however, neither of us parents' schedule works well. With much higher airfare combined, we decided to just send one. Our 7-yr old son HG goes by himself.

Using Unaccompanied Minor Program (delta.com)   we paid additional of $150 one-way. Thankfully on the way back a grand mother will fly with him on her way to a conference in the east coast in the US. HG will be accompanied by the airline company's associates inside of the airport's gate. With this program, 5-yr old or above can fly without adults technically speaking, and this fee covers up to 4 children. Things to remember for the future.

An adult must pick up at the airport of course. Arranging this in our case involved a bit of challenge, as the final destination in Japan is still a few hours away from the airport so after the loooong hours of solitude flight HG still has to go through immigration, and all that in the airport, then head to the place to stay in Japan. That portion of travel by itself not an easy task even for us parents, but this time I had to ask that task to a reliable adult.

In Japan HG will go back to a local elementary school again! This year though, he'll go to my wife's side of parents (HG's grand parents) unlike the last year where he went to papa's side of town and school, so for him it's a new (public) elementary school. Private schools didn't cross our mind, and there's a public elementary school in just a few minutes walking distance, so it was an easy choice, just contacted the city and eventually we got accepted. The municipality is fast developing city and known for businesses and academias, so looks like the city's admins and the schools might be much more used to accepting temporary entrance. Email response from school admin is same-day (as opposed to the school in my home town often takes a week, albeit for non-urgent matter though). 

The publicly funded after-school program ("gakudo/学童") is available, the application of which for our son is still in-process at the time of writing, but we expect him to be accepted by program that's taking place at the same school (apparently there are much more venues where public after-school program takes place than the school sites). For this, you need a rationale. In our case both grand parents who'll live together during the stay are working full-time, which lets us qualify.

Letting kids fly without adult internationally, particularly to Japan, is something that we were envisioning to do for our kids at some point in our life, as my wife flew every Summer to Japan by herself taking her younger sisters, but I hadn't expected we'd start doing it this early. It takes a lot of arrangement and assistance from families, and I admit it involves (well-controlled but still) risks. Hope everything works well.

Hope everything goes quite well, and maybe he gets to play soccer with his new friends in Japan.