Thanks to Sannohe’s sleep counseling, the truancy rate at the town’s middle schools was reduced to 2.36%  in 2013, down from 7.81% in 2010, reports The Japan News.

 

In early March, Rinpei Toyokawa, then a fifth-grader at Sannohe Primary School in the town, received an envelope at school. He opened it at home and read: “You require nearly nine hours of sleep nightly. To get up at 6:30 a.m., you must go to bed by 9:30 p.m.” It was a letter of evaluation of his sleeping habits.

For two weeks in early December, Toyokawa recorded his daily wake-up times and bedtimes and submitted it to the school.