Japan closed its schools, so kids held an adorable graduation ceremony in Minecraft

Students in Japan are staying home to avoid the spread of coronavirus COVID-19, and with schools shut down across the country, a lot of kids are soon going to miss their graduation ceremonies in late March. One group of elementary school kids came up with a charming as hell solution: Why not make their own graduation ceremony in Minecraft?

SoraNews24 picked up a viral tweet from a Japanese father, whose son and friends met up in-game to hang out and graduate as their Minecraft avatars. "They spent all day online together playing games and laughing. I’m glad they all had fun," he wrote.

The graduation hall is seriously impressive and seems to be the work of a YouTuber who helped the kids build and organize the event. It's a bright room, with rows of chairs for a tragically missing audience. The lighting and windows above really give the whole room a school auditorium vibe. As cute as it is to see these kids band together to put on their own graduation ceremony, it's also a bit sad—the mostly empty room is a reminder of how big the event should be.

You can watch the highlights in the video above. If you're already feeling a bit overwhelmed and emotional right now, a word of warning: You may lose it a couple minutes in when the kids line up to receive tiny little Minecraft diplomas on stage. So. Cute.

Thanks, IGN

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).