At the beginning of the twenty-first century, our challenge as educators is to make efforts toward enhancing our international perspectives while engaging in the process of updating our knowledge and skills for living in a rapidly changing world. An examination of the Japanese approach of national curriculum standards reform, especially the period for integrated study, and their challenges in practice has potential benefits worldwide for school teachers, administrators, policy-makers and curriculum developers to learn from their Japanese counterparts. From this study it can be claimed that the new course of study supports schools to change their climate, provide opportunity for teachers to take responsibility for managing curriculum in school, focus on learning-centered education, and expand global learning and learning from the community within an interdisciplinary curriculum approach.