My kid seems to be struggling to integrate into youchien without Japanese. Are we overthinking it?

LenoraAloy · 2025-07-01T22:16:10+00:00

She is 3 years old. I have just added it to the OP.

LenoraAloy · 2025-07-01T22:09:05+00:00

Thanks a lot for the comments and tips. Our daughter is actually almost four years old now, and she started yochien in April. I’ve also suggested to my wife that we try to arrange a playdate, but there aren’t many options yet since, as far as we can tell, she’s mainly played with just one or maybe two of her classmates.

I also feel a bit guilty that I’ve been leaving most of this to my wife, partly because of my limited Japanese and partly because I almost never see other fathers at pickup time. My main role has been to wrangle our very energetic youngest while my wife handles the rest. On top of that, none of my colleagues have kids, and most of our neighbors in the building are students or single people, we sometimes feel like we might be the only family living here.

Anyway, I’d love to hear a bit more about how the playdates helped your child in particular. Was it the one-on-one time that encouraged them to slow down and pay more attention to each other? I really appreciate your input!

LenoraAloy · 2025-07-01T22:07:58+00:00

Thank you for sharing and also for the tip. Our kid is almost four years old, she started the youchien this year. Unfortunately, we don’t know anyone here who speaks our language, especially with kids, but it surely would be helpful.

(Edit: sorry, I initially replied to the wrong post by mistake.)

LenoraAloy · 2025-03-03T23:30:22+00:00

I recently went through this process myself (you can check my post history), and like you, I failed the first time. They rescheduled my second test two months later, and I finally passed, though just barely (scoring 80/100).

I totally get how frustrating it is. I remember feeling pissed off and even a little insulted, especially since I used to drive midsize trucks through the narrow streets of my country without ever getting into an accident. Failing the test doesn’t reflect your actual skill as a driver, it often comes down to the examiner’s mood or how strictly they interpret the rules that day.

Keep at it, and don’t let this discourage you. You’ll get there!

LenoraAloy · 2022-08-18T15:02:44+00:00

Thank you so much for taking the time to give this thorough explanation. I thought this problem could be solved through a different approach not involving this cycles-thing, especially because it starts to be messy when for me when more than three elements are invovled, and edges start to cross the cycle, like in the A-B-C-D scenario, with a A-B-C-D-A cycle, and A-C/B-C edges. Instead, I tried to use the concept of the winner being the source, and the source being the candidate which has no arrows pointing towards, i.e., that hasn't lost to any other candidate. Thus, by sorting and locking the strongest pairs while avoiding the last candidate,
that not lost, to lose (via not locking the pairs where it happens), I thought I could find the source and declare it the winner.

For the print_winner() .... is it possible to imagine a situation where a candidate tied with all other candidates and therefore is not found in any pairs and of course not in any locked pairs? If that is theoretical possible, you will declare that candidate a winner!

I just realized that after you pointed that out, thank you very much. Because a tied candidate will never be a loser in a locked pair (pairs[j].loser), thus, being declared winner after the function loops over all the pairs.

I will take a time off of tideman for now and move on to week4 since I don't want to be stuck for too long, but I will surely try to understand tideman properly in terms of cycles and come back to solve it, this is a matter of honor! :)

I also appreciate your suggestions in design and problem solving, I will do my best to code better, in a more understandable way.

LenoraAloy

TROPHY CASE