The new-parents' briefing is where the school hands you the list and the bank form

Before a child starts at a Japanese public elementary school, the school holds a briefing for new parents (入学説明会 or 保護者説明会, nyūgaku setsumeikai / hogosha setsumeikai). It is the afternoon when that school, not a city-wide shop, tells you what to buy, what the school will hand out, and how materials money will leave your bank account. Nerima's page for foreign-national entry says the briefing is at the school the child will enter, in January or February, and that you should attend. If you do not have the date, ask that school.

One published example is the handout of Tachikawa Municipal Dai-go Elementary (立川市立第五小学校) for children who entered in April 2026. The briefing was Friday 13 February 2026, from 14:00, in the gym. The agenda was the principal, the neighbours who watch the walk home, the credit union that runs the debit, the PTA, the entrance ceremony and what to prepare, the special-support classroom, and how email from the school works. Your school's afternoon will not be this agenda. The shape is the useful part: the ceremony, the bag, and the bank form are explained together, with time for questions.

Who buys what, at that one school

Dai-go split the load. The family bought the stiff school bag (ランドセル, randoseru), a plain box pencil case, pencils, a red pencil, a plain eraser, a plain A4 writing board (下敷き, shitajiki), indoor shoes (上履き, uwabaki) and a bag for them, outdoor shoes the child can take off alone, a PE kit and bag, a disaster hood and cover, a lunch bag with a napkin, a face towel and a mask for lunch duty, clay, blunt scissors for the child's writing hand, a free notebook, a cloth tote, and a small bag for the melodica mouthpiece. Every item, including underwear and socks, had the name in hiragana: すべてに名前をひらがなで記入してください。 Clothes had to be easy to move in, with pockets, and easy for the child to put on. From the second day the child wears the yellow hat the school gives out at the ceremony.

The state supplied the textbooks. Tachikawa city supplied a tool box, clay and a case, a newsletter notebook, the yellow hat, a randoseru cover, a badge and a personal alarm. The hat and badge carry traffic-accident insurance from April through the next March. The PTA supplied a contact bag and the school emblem for the hat. The school itself bulk-bought crayons, coloured pencils, glue, maths and Japanese notebooks and a few other tools, and told parents not to buy those. Anything else waits until a note comes after entry. The handout says the city list can change.

A Bunkyo school's item-by-item list for the same April is a different article, what Rekisen asked first graders to prepare. Use it to see how specific a list gets. Buy from the sheet your own briefing hands you.

The bank debit

Dai-go's materials fee (教材費, kyōzaihi) is not a single price in the handout. The monthly debit is fixed later from the purchase plan issued at the start of the year. Separately, for things needed in the first days, that handout told parents to transfer 10,000 yen to the school account by Friday 27 February 2026. The account number was on another sheet.

The debit itself had these rules, all from that handout:

• The account is in a parent's name.
• One registration per child, even when an older sibling is already at the school.
• Register by the same Friday 27 February 2026.
• The debit runs on the 13th of each month. If the 13th fails, the credit union tries again. If the 13th is a day Tama Shinkin Bank is closed, it runs the next business day.
• The fee is 55 yen per debit, per child.

Those dates and amounts are Dai-go's for the April 2026 intake. They are not a Tokyo fee, and they are not an instruction to pay them now. A child starting in April 2027 needs the briefing that school holds in the winter before that April. Expect a pre-transfer and a debit form. Copy the figures off that form.

What goes wrong

Buying the whole stationery shop before the briefing means you own the crayons the school was going to buy, and you still lack the hat only that school sells. Writing names in romaji, when the sheet says hiragana, is a job you will do again in March. Registering one debit for two children, or using an account that is not the parent's, is the mistake the Dai-go sheet warns about. Missing the briefing leaves you without the account number. The ceremony day is a bad moment to discover the debit was never set up.

What to do now

• Ask the school named on your entry notice for the briefing date. In Nerima's published flow that meeting is in January or February.
• Go. Take something to write with. The list, the ceremony rules and the bank form are the point of the hour.
• Label in the script the sheet asks for, and skip items the school says it will buy in bulk.
• Open the debit in a parent's name, one child per form, by the date on your sheet.
• If the date you were given is for a previous April, ask the school for this year's handout before you transfer money.