Differences in kids clothing sizes in Japan to back home

Both of my children were born here in Japan, and one thing I had to learn how to decipher was the sizing of children's clothes here. Back in my home country of Australia and my husband's home country of the States, kids clothes are labeled in a manner that you can't really mess up. The sizes correspond to children's ages, so give or take a little and you're usually okay. Newborn, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months...and so on and so forth. Not that hard to understand, right?

Japan however has a completely different system, which is also relatively easy to understand once you get what the numbers mean. Here, the sizes for kids clothing are marked by the child's height in centimeters - so you'll see tags that are more along the lines of 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 (and so on).

If you've been in Japan a while it's likely that you've already got this knowledge down pat, but if you're new here - or even if you've stumbled across this post courtesy of Google on a vacation in Japan trying to size up clothes for your kids or other children in your life - here's a bit of a rundown on the corresponding ages to the sizes here.

Just a FYI - this isn't a perfectly accurate sizing chart - my daughter for instance is only three and a half but is already in a Japanese size 110 for some items, since she's pretty tall for her age (she got her 6 foot tall father's genes rather than my 5'4" genes!)

Hopefully this helps you out if you're new to Japan and needing a quick reference guide for kid's clothes sizes, or perhaps you're picking up some clothing for the little ones in your life on a vacation here. If you know how tall your child is in centimeters, you'll probably find it a breeze and not even need a chart!