Finding nursery in Japan
20 Sep 2025 | #parenting | #japanWe went through finding a nursery for our then 8 months old daughter last year, but I haven’t wrote about it yet, so here it goes.
Our situation
My daughter was half years old when we started looking for nursery for her. We were living in Mitaka City (Tokyo) at that time, but already bought land in the neighboring Musashino City, so we initially looked at nursery at both places, but later decided to focus on Musashino to avoid having to change nurseries after the move.
I work as a full-time employee (正社員), while my wife used to work as a freelancer then started her postgraduate studies before our daughter was born, and took a year off from the university when the kid was born. She had one semester left, so that’s why we wanted our kid to start nursery.
First step: city hall
We talked to both Mitaka and Musashino city halls, and they provided us with a list of nurseries in both cities, as well as a general explanation.
Types of nurseries
As far as I understood there were the following nursery types available. There were some others for smaller places that only accept kids under 3, but we didn’t really consider those.
認可保育園 (ninka) - Licensed Daycare Center
Approved by the local government under strict national standards (building size, number of staff, safety, hygiene, etc.). Sometimes run by the city (公立保育園) sometimes private (私立認可保育園), but mostly indistinguishable.
Applications are handled by the city hall using a point system, and is based on the need of the family: special circumstances (single parent, disability, medical conditions) get priority. Otherwise points come from how much the parents work (with full-time being the most points). You can specify the list of nurseries to apply to. Each month they check, and if a nursery has a place available, the person that applied there with the maximum point gets accepted.
Fees are determined by the city based on the income of the family with various subsidies (e.g. free from 3 years old nationwide), and in Tokyo it’s completely free from September 2025. Earlier it used to be between free to 72,800 yen for high earners (above 10 million yen yearly income or so), with the average payment around 28,250 yen.
There are not enough places in Tokyo, and it is common to have many times more applications than spots available. Likely due to this, it is treated a bit as a privilege rather than a service/business: it is common for nurseries to ask you to bring diapers for your kid, and also take home the used ones, and you just have to follow the rules like this. Also there are stories of parents that went shopping, then picked up their kids. And the nursery asked them that if they had time to go shopping, then they should pick up the kid earlier instead.
We checked but both Mitaka and Musashino had long wait lists, and also we would have lost a lot of points in Musashino, since officially we still lived in Mitaka and they give priority to their local residents. So in the end we decided to only apply after we move.
認可外保育 (ninkagai) - Unlicensed Daycare Facilities
Not formally licensed by the prefectural government, but still operating legally. They must notify local authorities and meet basic safety/hygiene rules, but standards are looser. In Tokyo, some get certified by the Tokyo government as 東京都認証保育所, which has higher standards than the default, but still not as high as the fully licensed.
Mostly privately run, and they operate as for-profit businesses.
Applications are handled by the place directly, and usually first-comes-first-served. Fees are also set by the place and usually don’t depend on the family income, though the Tokyo certification might set limits on the fee (I’m not fully sure).
International nurseries
Most of these don’t accept zero year old kids, but we checked the nearby MIST (Musashino International School Tokyo) and their kindergarden (from 3 years old) class costs about 2 million yen in the first year (slightly less later), which we found to be too expensive anyway.
企業内保育所 - Company nurseries
These are usually created by a company to help their own employees, e.g. I’ve heard about one that was in a hospital for the kids of the staff working there. Some will have contract with multiple companies, and we talked to one that would allow additional companies to join, but it seemed they would need my employer to pay them, which wasn’t really an option (I work for a company that’s too big for these type of deals).
If you employer has one, you likely already know, and otherwise these are likely not an option.
認証保育所 - Tokyo licensed nursery
As I mentioned above, these are licensed by Tokyo. Part of the requirement is a cap on the maximum monthly fee (80,000 yen/month under 3, 77,000 yen otherwise), and in exchange for this they receive subsidies both when being established as well as ongoing support (source1, source2).
Applications are handled by the nurseries directly, however (as we learned recently) because of the subsidy, the city hall might still require parents to fulfill some requirements. For example both Mitaka and Musashino require the need for a nursery (so parents have to work at least part time), but it seems Mitaka is much more relaxed about this than Musashino.
Musashino has a website that lists all nurseries with the available spots, and this is where we found ours. Interestingly while the nursery is in Musashino, since we live in Mitaka, the Mitaka city hall pays the nursery, so we had to fulfill the requirements set by Mitaka.
Application and fees
We applied and got accepted to one of the Tokyo-certified nurseries of Musashino, that is part of the Poppins Nurseries chain. After filling out the application form, there was an interview (of the parents, not the baby) but it was mostly an explanation session to ensure we knew how everything worked.
We started out in the 6 hours/day (9am-3pm), 5 days/week plan for 60,000 yen per month, then later switched to the 8 hours/day (9am-5pm) for 72,000 yen per month.
Since they run as a private business they offer additional services: normally you need to bring diapers and towels, but for an additional 3,900 yen per month for diapers and 1,800 yen for towels they will provide them. We signed up for both.
Getting used to the nursery
Our daughter was about 8 months old when she started going to nursery. They have a system where kids start with a short amount of time (maybe initially 30 minutes, then 1-2 hours) for a few days, then gradually increase the time. Under 1 year most kids still mainly drink milk or formula, so it is vital that they accept it in the nursery.
Our kid stopped crying after a few days, but refused to drink there. This meant that they could only keep her for 2 hours (since kids at her age have to drink every 3 hours), so we brought her at 9am then picked her up at 11am for almost a month. We tried to give her morning formula earlier, hoping to make her hungry, but she likely realized that we will pick her up soon, so she kept refusing the bottle in the nursery. We even bought the same bottle that the nursery was using, but she was fine with it at home.
The nursery tried their best to help, and even let my wife go in once and feed her from the bottle she just rejected, and she drunk it all. But still, next day she refused it from the nursery teacher.
After over a month of picking her up at 11am, she decided that actually the nursery was a good place, and she drunk the whole bottle, and kept drinking every day from that point on. She is just a stubborn little girl.
Since then she loves the nursery, always happy to arrive, and also happy to see us when we go to pick her up.
Since the nursery is closer to the new house, it takes either 30 minutes by bus and train, 45 minutes by walk or a 15 minute bike ride, so we bought an electric assisted bike and have been using that to bring her to the nursery:
I can highly recommend this. We ended up getting the more expensive version that comes with a radio key, so if you turn on the bike while the key is in your pocket, it will unlock itself (similar to how cars work). This is super helpful especially when taking care of a toddler.