Japanese kindergarten

I had a chance to visit a Japanese kindergarten for the first time in my life. The kindergarten was open to the public to showcase the different activities that they have for children, ranging from building fake railroad tracks, making plum juice, building a playhouse for beetles, etc. To me, it was very different from the kindergarten that I attended in Singapore, which was firstly a mission school (and thus I heard quite some Bible stories) and secondly, didn't have such fun group activities. While it may be good to start young when teaching kids to read and write, maybe we should not forget that social skills are just as important as academic ones.