In Japan, teachers focus not only on their students memorizing multiplication tables, but also on their understanding of the meaning of multiplication. Children are expected to understand that “multiplication is used to find how many objects there are in so many units when the number of objects for one unit is known” and that it is “a way to find the amount that is so many times the base amount. “as well as" a concise expression of repeated addition .”(Elementary School Teaching Guide, 2008)