Kasutanetto: the Ministry of Education's multilingual school forms

A Japanese school sends paper. The deadline is often one line in the middle of a page. Kasutanetto (かすたねっと, also written CASTA-NET) is the Ministry of Education's search site for multilingual school materials. The address is https://casta-net.mext.go.jp/. The about page, read on 9 October 2026, says the International Education Division (総合教育政策局国際教育課) runs it so that teachers, and others, can support foreign and returnee children in Japanese lessons and in subject lessons.

You do not pay anything on that page, and you do not create an account. The about page says parents may use it:

外国人児童生徒等の指導支援に携わる教員、支援者、自治体職員、保護者、どなたでも利用いただけます。利用者登録等は必要ありません。

What the about page says you can search

The site collects materials made by boards and schools that already enrol many foreign children, and offers them as examples:

• Multilingual school documents (多言語の学校文書). Notices of the kind a school sends home, in Japanese beside another language.
• Teaching materials for the education of foreign children, again as links to files other boards have published.
• A search of school words (学校関係用語) across languages.
• A way to build a school schedule (予定表) in more than one language.

The about page does not print a list of languages. The document search shows the languages attached to each file after you open a result. Use the language on that result, not a list from memory.

The nickname expands, on the same page, to an English phrase about multilingual resources and software tools for school children with foreign backgrounds. The site opened in March 2011. The ministry has run it outright since February 2019. Operation in fiscal 2025 (令和7年度) is contracted to a company; that does not change the address or the fact that the about page names the ministry as the body responsible.

How to use it the week a printout arrives

1. Keep the Japanese original. That sheet is the one your school issued. The date on it is the date you follow.
2. Open the document search. Look for the kind of paper you are holding: a class newsletter, a health survey, a trip, a parents' meeting, an enrollment notice. The class newsletter, and where dates hide in it, is described in the class newsletter.
3. Open a result that pairs Japanese with your language. Read the Japanese line and the translation together. The file was written by some other board, as an example. Names, yen and dates inside it belong to that example.
4. Write your school's date, the thing to bring, and the reply line onto the original or onto a note you keep with it. If a sentence still does not match the paper in your hand, ask the teacher which line is the instruction. A person who can do that in another language is in help in your language.
5. The schedule tool is for making a calendar you can read. It does not replace the month's newsletter. If the two disagree, the newsletter from your school is the instruction.

The about page also says training videos on the site may be used in a school or a board workshop, with no extra procedure. A parent does not need that. The document search is the part that helps with tonight's printout.

What this is not

Kasutanetto does not enrol your child, and it does not file an application to the ward. The first two weeks after you arrive, including who at the board to ask for a place, are in arriving mid-year. Japanese lessons inside the school day are a request to the school, described in Japanese-language lessons at a public school. The site can help you read the words on a form about those lessons. It does not decide whether your school has a teacher for them.

It is also not a translation of the individual sheet your teacher wrote this morning. If the search has nothing close, you still have the original. Take it to the Friday Tokyo line, or to the Kanagawa education desk on the day that matches your language, rather than guessing the date.

What goes wrong

• Handing the school a downloaded sample as if it were your completed form. The sample is someone else's document.
• Obeying a date printed on the sample. Your deadline is the date on the paper the school gave you.
• Assuming the site has uploaded your ward's current notice. The about page describes a search of materials other boards have published.
• Creating an account because a different city website asked for one. This about page says no registration is required.
• Waiting to learn Japanese before you answer a reply-by date. Use the parallel text this week, and ask a person where one line is still unclear.

What to do now

1. Bookmark https://casta-net.mext.go.jp/ while someone can still help you find it.
2. The next printout: search the document type, open your language beside the Japanese, and copy only the meaning. Keep the school's date.
3. If the result is from another city, treat every yen figure and every weekday in it as that city's example.
4. If you need a person, use the Tokyo or Kanagawa line in the help article. Say which paper you are holding.

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