Japan this December: what it actually takes to send your child
Picture four days in Tsukuba this December — a quietly remarkable research city just outside Tokyo, home to Japan's space agency and some of its most advanced robotics labs. Your child, aged 10 to 18, joins a small team of students their age and spends the week turning a business idea into something real: tested, refined, and presented out loud on the final day. You travel to Japan together as a family; the camp itself belongs to the students. No Japanese needed. Just know that December is peak season for flights, so if this is calling to you, don't wait too long to book.
If your child has ever looked at something and said, I want to make that — and you haven't quite known what to do with that spark — this is what we built for them.
Not sure where to start? Send us your questions and our Australia-based team will reply by email, usually within two business days.
Most families in Australia spend the last week of December at the beach, or at a grandparent's table, or somewhere between the two. It is the busiest week of our year.
So it is a fair question to ask why we are inviting Australian students to spend four days of it in a Japanese science city, sitting in a classroom, arguing about business ideas with people they met the day before.
This article is the honest answer. It covers what the camp is, what getting there actually involves, and why we think Japan in late December is worth the trouble — including the genuinely inconvenient parts.
The scheduling logic, briefly: Australian school holidays run from mid-December to late January. Japanese school holidays are much shorter — roughly 25 December to 7 January. This camp sits in the narrow overlap where students from both countries are free at the same time.
That overlap is the whole point. Your child will not be in a program built for international visitors. They will be in a room with Japanese students of the same age, working on the same problem, under the same deadline. That only happens in this one window.
There's a second thing, harder to put in a brochure. Japan in late December is genuinely one of the better times to see it. The illuminations are up. The air is cold and clear. New Year preparations are underway everywhere. It is not the Japan of cherry blossom photographs, and it is more interesting for it.
What actually happens at this camp?
Four days. Small teams. Each team has two adults with them: a founder in their twenties who is currently running a business, and a bilingual university student who has been through the program before.
The work is simple to describe and hard to do. Each student arrives with nothing and leaves with a business idea they have thought through, tested against other people's questions, and presented out loud to the whole room on the final day.
Between those two points sit the things that make the idea real:
A visit to JAXA Tsukuba Space Center and CYBERDYNE STUDIO (planned) — Japan's space agency and a robotics company building powered exoskeletons
An interview session with student founders from the University of Tsukuba, who are running ventures while still enrolled
Two days of building, revising, and rehearsing
A Christmas party on the third night, because they are still children
We have run this program for six years. 378 students have been through it. The thing parents tell us most often is not about business at all — it is that their child came home willing to speak up.
How does a family from Australia actually get there?
This is the first question every Australian parent asks, so let us put it before everything else.
You travel to Japan as a family. Your child attends the camp alone.
That is the shape of it. Parents fly over with their child, and then have four days in Japan while the camp runs. We are not asking you to put a ten-year-old on a flight to Tokyo by themselves.
The practical details:
When: 25 to 28 December 2026 (four days, three nights).
Where it starts and ends: Tsukuba Station, on the Tsukuba Express line.
Getting to Tsukuba from central Tokyo: About 45 minutes from Akihabara Station via the Tsukuba Express.
Getting to Tsukuba from the airport: Narita Airport connects more directly to Tsukuba than Haneda does, since Tsukuba sits northeast of central Tokyo. If you're flying into Haneda, budget extra time for the transfer.
Where students stay: Hotel JAL City Tsukuba, supervised overnight by our staff, for three nights (arrival night through to the final day).
Where parents stay: Your choice — many families base themselves in Tokyo and come out for the final presentations.
Visas: Australian passport holders can currently enter Japan for short stays without a visa. Confirm your own situation with the Embassy of Japan before booking.
Flights are not included, and December is peak season out of Australia. If you are seriously considering this, book early — that is the single most useful piece of advice we can give.
The final-day presentations are open to parents. Most families come.
Still working out whether this is possible for your family? Ask us anything before you decide — our Australia-based team answers by email, usually within two business days.
Why Tsukuba specifically?
Tsukuba is not on most tourist itineraries, and that is deliberate on our part.
It is a planned city built around research. JAXA is here. So are national laboratories, the University of Tsukuba, and a cluster of technology companies. Roughly one in ten residents is a researcher. It is the closest thing Japan has to a city organised around the question "what comes next?"
For four days, that is the environment your child works in.
The value is not that they will see a rocket, although they will. It is that the distance between "technology on a screen" and "technology built by people in this building" collapses. Students who arrive thinking innovation happens somewhere else, to someone else, tend to stop thinking that.
The student founders do the same job from a different angle. It is one thing for an adult to tell a fourteen-year-old that they could start something. It is another for a twenty-year-old to sit across the table and describe what they actually did last month.
What if my child doesn't speak Japanese?
No Japanese is required.
Every team includes a bilingual mentor, and the program is designed so that a student with no Japanese can do all of the work — including the final presentation, which can be delivered in English.
We should be straight with you about what this means in practice. This is not an English-language camp with Japanese decoration. Most students in the room will be Japanese, and much of the informal conversation over meals will be in Japanese. Your child will spend four days as one of the few people who does not automatically understand everything being said.
In our experience that is uncomfortable for about half a day, and then it becomes the most valuable part of the week.
What do families say afterwards?
My daughter used to freeze in front of people. Four days changed that more than I thought possible. — Parent of a participant, Japan (translated from Japanese)
I was nervous at first. But after my presentation I thought — actually, I can do this. — Participant, age 13, Japan (translated from Japanese)
Meeting the student founders gave him a clear goal. He has been far more proactive since coming home. — Parent of a 14-year-old, Japan (translated from Japanese)
These particular comments are from Japanese families. Students from Australia have been joining the camp for several years as well.
What does it cost, and how do we apply?
Fees start from approximately A$1,500 and vary by the number of days your child participates. This covers accommodation, meals, transport to and from activities, and all activity costs for the duration of the camp. Places, the full daily schedule, and our supervision and safety arrangements are covered in detail during a free, one-to-one online information session, where we can speak to your own situation — travel dates, your child's age, language, anything.
Questions before that? Email us directly at Japan Junior Cultural Exchange: japanjce@gmail.com — we answer in English.
If this intake is already full
Places are limited and Japanese families book early. If December 2026 is closed by the time you reach us, there are three other ways forward:
Join the waitlist for this intake — cancellations do happen, usually in October
Book a one-to-one session to talk through whether a future intake fits your family better
Register for priority notice of the next camp, so you hear before it opens publicly
None of these cost anything, and none of them commit you.
Not sure where to start? Send us your questions and our Australia-based team will reply by email, usually within two business days.
Junior Business Camp is run by HANA'S ACADEMIA LLC, Japan.
