Tamagawa Academy (K12) and University

A large Japanese K-12 academy in Machida that runs an IB MYP and DP track inside a MEXT Article 1 school. The fit for families who want a Japanese school setting with an English-medium IB pathway, not for families who need a fully international environment.

Tamagawa was founded in 1929 and became an IB World School in 2009. The IB programme runs MYP from grades 6 to 10 and DP in 11 and 12, mostly in English, and graduates earn both the Japanese high school certificate and the IB Diploma. The Machida campus is large, around 60 hectares, about an hour from central Tokyo.

The Article 1 status is the main thing to understand. Compulsory PE and music are taught in Japanese, school notices often run in Japanese, and the broader campus culture is a Japanese school first. Families with Japanese at home or who plan to stay long term find the bilingual route useful. Families on a short posting with no Japanese tend to find it harder going.

• Tamagawa runs an MYP / DP IB stream alongside its Japanese MEXT Article 1 K-12 curriculum. Posters describe it as one of the more reliable IB options in Tokyo because of IB inspection requirements.
• The clearest negative signal comes from one English-speaking parent: school notices arrive in Japanese and the family translates everything themselves; compulsory PE and music are taught in Japanese with grades counting toward GPA, and class repetition is a real possibility on failure.
• Parents and posters who do speak Japanese, or who want a Japanese-credential-plus-IB route, describe the school positively; outcomes work for bicultural and Japanese-returnee families.
• Teachers in the IB programme describe a structured environment; one ex-IB teacher said qualification as a secondary teacher was sufficient when they joined, with IB training on the job.
• The school has been used as a hosting site for IB Educator Certificate programmes via MEXT, which adds context to teacher quality but not directly to parent experience.