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An introduction to International student’s life in Japan

Most of us have the impression that if you don’t speak Japanese, it will be very difficult to live in Japan. However, there are a great amount of international students coming to Japan without high proficiency in Japanese. Not only students with objective to improve their language skill are heading to Japan but also students who want to pursue their professional education in Japan. It is true that without knowing the language you will encounter considerable problems due to the uniqueness of the japanese language , but still if you get access to some knowledge in advance, you can have a very good time living in japan. Here I would like to share about some points I know about being an international student.

(Reference: Tokyo Tower, Tokyo, Japan)

In general, there are two kinds of international students as I mentioned above: students who want to improve their Japanese and of course those who want to know better about the culture of this country and students who want to pursue their further education in universities such as BA, MA, PhD. As for the latter type of students, they can be divided again into another two groups: Japanese program and English program.

(Reference: Rikugien,Tokyo, Japan)

With respect to Japanese program, students should have a high Japanese proficiency and certificate to certify their language skills. Mostly, their courses will be conducted in Japanese and generally their classmates tend to be Japanese.

Meanwhile, international students who belong to the English program, their Japanese proficiency is not necessarily required by universities, but instead, TOEFL or IELTS is a must to be a qualified applicant. Japanese proficiency is not a must but if you can speak Japanese, you will leave a better impression and be more competitive among applicants.

(Reference: Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan)

A project named Global 30, recently modified as super 30 is aiming at attracting more international students to Japan and a lot of good universities are offering courses in English. You can find relative information easily in the internet. Comparing the universities and majors you are interested in, select a best option for your further studies and prepare all the documents required by the selected university. It should be kept in mind that each university has its own system of enrollment and requirements. The university you like may not offer the major you prefer in English, so it may take some time to figure out which is the best choice. In addition, on their pages, you can find information about all kinds of available scholarships to cover your living expenses which is considered quite high compared with other countries in the world. Living expense will be talked about later soon.

Thank you for your attention and hope you find this article useful.

Estrella Chen

China