Old Enough!

[Skye1300]

Oh my goodness I came across this cute show on Netflix. LOL It's amazing how the Japanese culture is so different from ours here in America! They teach children to be independent and learn chores and things very early! I wouldn't think a 2 year was capable of running errands to pick up things for their mom, by their self!

 

[dzheremi]

It used to be fairly common for very young children to run quick errands for older relatives. Even when I was a young child back in the late 80s/early 90s (older than the child in the video, but not by too much), I was sometimes sent to the corner store at the end of our street to pick up little things, like if we'd run out of milk or something along those lines. I'm not sure when this changed, but it was probably the result of increased awareness of child abductions by strangers and the resulting feeling that kids weren't safe anymore being by themselves out in society. Japan as a society is much safer overall than the United States (much lower violent crime rate), so that anxiety is probably absent in most places.

 

[returntosender]

There's too many bad people in the world.

 

[d taylor]

It is a tv show

 

[Skye1300]

There's too many bad people in the world.

Unfortunately that is true in most places. Pretty soon even places like this in Japan will have to stop doing things like that.

 

[Skye1300]

It used to be fairly common for very young children to run quick errands for older relatives. Even when I was a young child back in the late 80s/early 90s (older than the child in the video, but not by too much), I was sometimes sent to the corner store at the end of our street to pick up little things, like if we'd run out of milk or something along those lines. I'm not sure when this changed, but it was probably the result of increased awareness of child abductions by strangers and the resulting feeling that kids weren't safe anymore being by themselves out in society. Japan as a society is much safer overall than the United States (much lower violent crime rate), so that anxiety is probably absent in most places.

Good point!

 

[Skye1300]

It is a tv show

LOL I looked it up because I was like this can't be real. They really do do that.

How did the idea for Old Enough! come about? It all started with a thought — there has always been this widely accepted practice in Japan of asking a child to run an errand. What if we [film] a child when they’re sent on their very first errand, without them being aware of what we’re doing? Perhaps we might find something in the footage that’s worthy of television. With that, we started conducting simulations and learned that for every 10 errands we shoot, about one will be television material. To this day, we just focus on recording those first errand moments and 1 out of every 6 to 10 gets aired.

How do you find the children? Who selects the errand that they’re assigned?We choose those that are going to [be asked] to run a first errand anyway, regardless of whether they will get filmed or not. It’s not the same as looking for candidates to cast for television game shows. We don’t feel like we’re making a show for television — this is more of a documentary, and we try to find families who will allow us to record their stories. Family situations have changed drastically over the 30-plus years since we started this, yet in Japan, the tradition of sending children on errands remains. Our hope is to document the “errand tradition” before it gradually disappears.

The families decide what errand they want their child to run — we don’t tell them what to do. We actually share stories of failures that happen throughout the years and offer advice on how to get their child to feel motivated about their task. Oftentimes, they will suggest that the child should decide what they want to buy, but that’s not an errand — that’s just shopping. It’s when they run an errand that their true strength comes out. It’s difficult for a child to persevere until the end unless they’re doing it for someone. For the first time ever, a child who has had everything done for them until now gets to experience the joy of doing something for someone.

Does the camera crew have instructions to hide from the kids at certain spots? The camera crew wear costumes and pretend they are passersby so they don’t need to hide. We tell them to act normally, but new camera crew members tend to want to hide. They know that when a child talks to them, they need to deal with the situation like an adult would, and they are instructed not to initiate conversation with the child.

Is it hard to keep a straight face when the kids address you during their errand? Sometimes a child will ask, “What are you doing?” We simply return the question and say, “What about you, what are you doing?” They will say “errand!” proudly and start talking about what they’ve set out to do. They forget they had a question to begin with and go on with their task. At that age, they can only think about one thing at a time, and we take advantage of that when we shoot.