Tokio Heidi – Japanese children’s songs

One great thing about having kids is you get to see all the cutesy videos made for them. When my son was very young he was into the “Super Simple Learning” videos on Youtube, especially the “Twinkle Twinkle little star” one, which has great visuals and sound.

Bringing up my son bilingually Japanese, I also have the opportunity to see all the neat Japanese children’s videos. There happens to be is a Japanese version of the “Twinkle Twinkle little star” one which is great, but more recently he has been into a Japanese group called “Tokio Heidi” (東京ヘイジ）.

The first video I saw from this group is “teku teku arukou” which has great visuals for kids, plus a super catchy theme song that I still catch myself singing now and then.

My latest favorite is “Welcome to the Snowman party!” (ようこそ！ゆきだるまのパーティへ！) which is actually more like a short story than purely song-based video.  It’s quite cute with a great surprise ending, be sure to check it out.

And if you’re one of the parents struggling to get your young child to brush his or her teeth (which is most parents, I think), their video on toothbrushing might be a good one to show your child.

These videos are all great resources for those studying Japanese because of their easily-understood pronunciation, Japanese subtitles (I recommend shutting off the English ones if you know basic Hiragana), and real-world topics related to everyday life.