School lunch fees: Tokyo's booklet says the parent bill ended in 2025; Kawasaki's elementary bill is zero this year

School lunch (学校給食, gakkō kyūshoku) is part of the school day in most Japanese elementary schools. Children serve it and clear it. The Ministry of Education's 2015 guidebook for foreign children says parents bear the lunch fee (給食費, kyūshokuhi), and that a family who cannot eat an ingredient for health or religious reasons should tell the class teacher. That sentence is the older national description. It is not the bill a Tokyo or Kawasaki elementary parent is being asked to pay in the 2026 school year. Two later official texts say the parent charge has been taken off, in different ways.

Tokyo: the booklet's line

Page 173 of Tokyo's Children's Future Action 2025 (こども未来アクション2025) states that school lunch fees were made free in every Tokyo municipality from January 2025: 都内全ての区市町村で学校給食費を無償化！（2025年1月～）

The same page describes the money behind that line. Tokyo subsidises half of what a municipality pays to parents to lighten the lunch charge. The ceiling is the Tokyo average price of one meal. The page does not print that average in yen. It also says that, until a national measure is in place, Tokyo supports the effort, and that for municipalities (the cities and towns outside the 23 wards) the support goes up to seven-eighths. A separate line on the same page says Tokyo itself bears the lunch fee that parents of metropolitan-school pupils would otherwise pay.

So for a child in a ward or municipal elementary school in Tokyo, the booklet's claim is that the parent lunch bill has been gone since January 2025. Your school's monthly payment slip is the check. If a line called 給食費 is still there, ask the school whether it is a leftover label or a real charge. The booklet is a policy page, not a receipt.

Kawasaki: zero for elementary this year, and you still file a form

Kawasaki's April 2026 notice to parents of municipal elementary schools and the elementary department of special-needs schools explains the legal split, then the exception. Under the school lunch law, the city pays for kitchens, equipment and staff. Parents had been charged only for ingredients. In fiscal 2025 the elementary ingredient cost was revised to 317 yen a meal, and a national grant kept the parent share at the old 270 yen. From fiscal 2026 the city will retune the fee each year as prices move. For this year, elementary parents pay nothing. A national programme to cut the lunch burden, plus the same kind of local grant, covers it.

The notice is explicit that there is no invoice, and equally explicit that you still tell the school when the child will not eat. File a lunch-category change form (学校給食費区分変更届) before you:

• stop lunch, restart it, or switch to "no milk" or "milk only"
• know the child will miss four or more lunch days in a row because of illness or a long absence

Allergy cases use the same form. The school stocks the paper, and it is also on the city site. If you never file, and the child is absent every lunch day from the first to the last of a month (March and August excepted), the city stops ordering food from the first day of the month after next, so a long absence does not keep generating meals. Restarting then needs another form. Transferring to a school outside the city system needs the ordinary transfer papers. A lunch form is, in principle, not required for that move.

There is no elementary amount to pay in Kawasaki for fiscal 2026. The phone for the notice is the Health and School Lunch Promotion Office, 044-200-2539.

What a bill means if you still see one

The 2015 guidebook's parent-pays sentence still matters in a municipality that has not taken the charge off, and it still matters for a cost the local free-lunch scheme does not cover. The guidebook also says a municipal board can help with lunch and supplies when it agrees that money makes public elementary attendance difficult (就学援助, shūgaku enjo). How to apply is school expense aid. Do not assume a free-lunch year and an aid grant are the same form.

Yokohama's current parent charge is not in the pages this article uses. If you live there, the city's lunch page is the one that can say whether this year is zero.

What goes wrong

A family in Tokyo hears "free" and ignores a form the school still needs for an allergy or a stopped meal. In Kawasaki that form is how the kitchen avoids ordering food the child will not eat, even though the invoice is zero. A family reads the 2015 guidebook, budgets 270 yen a meal, and argues with a school that is no longer charging it. A family reads the Tokyo booklet and assumes Kawasaki, in the next prefecture, follows Tokyo's January 2025 date. Kawasaki's own notice puts the elementary parent share at zero from April 2026, after a year in which parents still paid 270 yen. A junior-high lunch is outside the elementary notice. Ask the school before you treat every child in the household as covered.

What to do now

• Look at the latest school payment slip. If you are in Tokyo, the city's booklet says the parent lunch charge has been gone since January 2025. If a lunch line remains, ask the school what it is.
• In Kawasaki elementary, pay nothing for fiscal 2026, and still file the category form if the child will stop lunch, stop milk, or miss four or more days in a row.
• Tell the class teacher about food the child cannot eat, for health or religious reasons, as the guidebook says. The kitchen cannot guess.
• If money is tight and a lunch or materials line is still on the slip, ask the board about school-expense aid. The free-lunch page will not fill that form in for you.