Walk to School

“[Japanese] kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others,” he says.

Many city children continue to take the train to school and run errands in their neighborhood without close supervision.

By giving them this freedom, parents are placing significant trust not only in their kids, but in the whole community. “Plenty of kids across the world are self-sufficient,” Dixon observes. “But the thing that I suspect Westerners are intrigued by [in Japan] is the sense of trust and cooperation that occurs, often unspoken or unsolicited.”

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