TLDR: Have you gone through a fully Japanese STEM degree while having subpar Japanese skills? Doesn’t matter which field you’re in, if it’s bachelors, masters or phd, I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on it and how you managed to graduate.
-Background-
I’ve posted here before, Im in a liberal arts program fully in English at a fairly reputable private university(not Keio/Waseda, one rank lower). I have conversational Japanese skills and don’t have trouble with day to day Kanji, I also survived through 3 years of the Japanese high school curriculum while having elementary school level Japanese at the time(Went to an international school up to middle school). Still, my Japanese is very subpar to Japanese college students.
I’ve looked into a bunch of career paths because Im worried about my future and I’ve decided that I want to pivot into software engineering – more focused on hard skills than knowing advanced Japanese. It’s pretty much impossible to change majors at my current university(lot of Japanese universities are strict on changing majors) so my only option is to transfer into a another university or go through shinsotsu job hunting to get into IT.
I’ve decided on a Kokuritsu university I want to transfer to for CS. The transfer exam is basically freshman level math, basic programming and TOEIC scores, not impossible to self study with the abundance of resources nowadays.
What I’m worried about is if I do get accepted – I had a hard time not making a fool of myself in high school because of my low Japanese skills so I don’t know how well I’d fare in a JP stem major.
Of course I’ll try to bring my Japanese level up during the year and half I have left until I transfer, but I’m worried that won’t be enough to catch up with doing all the classes, reading academic papers and writing research papers in Japanese. I know for a fact that a lot of JP unis make their student read research papers in English and allow them to write their graduation thesis in English(even in STEM, also at the uni I’m interested in) but I still have a lot of anxiety on it. If I drop out after transferring I’ll probably regret it for a long time. Would’ve spent way too much money and time on it.
So yeah, would really appreciate if you could share your experiences and thoughts on it.
8 comments
I studied my PhD at one of the “National 7” Japanese Universities.
Since it was mostly about conducting experiments and publishing papers in more reputable English journals, it was ok for me to have just very basic Japanese. If anything, I was able to save the department money by not needing a translator for publishing in journals. Those are expensive and they charge by the word.
I got a masters degree in the equivalent of a CS major from a Japanese university. The only things I had to do in Japanese in 2 years in terms of coursework were a class in Japanese business communication and one linear algebra class (which I already knew most of the material for from my undergrad).
That being said, though, things might be more Japanese-intensive for a bachelor degree.
I did my engineering physics bachelor in one of the top 10 public uni under mext. I don’t think you can survive with a subpar Japanese. I had multiple occasions of technical discussions with internal and external stakeholders in conferences and lab sessions and thesis defense in Japanese.
From my perspective, bachelor is a bit different than grads. If the program is in full Japanese, you’d be expected to be fully capable in progressing your study and research using Japanese, just like your Japanese peer.
But first of all, I think you’d need to get accepted first…
Graduate School at Todai in Mathematical Sciences – this program is now MORE done in English than it used to be (maybe even all English for all I know.) I then went to Grad School at Kyodai for PhD – by then my Japanese was college level and your question really didn’t apply, so this is just about when I was at Todai:
TBH, while I had taken Japanese @ Undergraduate school, I was very very bad at any sort of conversation or the like, very academic if you will. I joked during school that my only Japanese knowledge was female about 5’9″ 140 and from Niigata.
Teaching was done in Japanese/English/Math, math publications are like most natural sciences are always in English, and honestly I probably struggled less with Native English/Minimal Japanese than the Japanese students did with Native Japanese/Minimal English.
I still wish I was better prepared for Japanese in general when I came to Japan as I think my social and work life would always have been much better. No matter what you need to start working on getting better at Japanese, your life will be better academics aside.
Plenty of Monbukagakusho scholarship students every year who join undergraduate courses at Japanese universities after only 1 year of intensive Japanese language course.
You will do fine, specially in STEM. I’d have my doubts if it was philosophy, history, or Japanese literature, but STEM is alright.
How about just staying where you are if you’re already in a MARCH school for your bachelor’s degree and focusing to getting into a higher ranked national university for a MS in computer science? You’ll still be able to participate as a shinsotsu either way and not have to worry about taking time to study for another set of entrance exams.
I took my masters at UTokyo with little to no Japanese. The lectures were in Japanese but the professors provide English translations of their slides. Funny enough, all of their references were in English, so while the students were listening to the lecture I was hunched over my laptop scanning through the publications they referenced.
And anyway, the lectures were only a small part of the degree. Most of the work will be through your thesis, which you can write in either Japanese or English.
Most likely Sophia and maybe Doshisha I guess?
I don’t know your school’s policy, but at Waseda where I went, we could take other faculty’s courses. At this coming Fall 2023 semester, try that out. See if you can understand and catch up. If not, fuck it. You gonna be having troubles at 旧帝国 unis. For me as a Korean, when I had N1(120/180), I was able to comprehend 80% or more during lectures, but this may not be applicable to you because Jap-Kor are basically the same in academics, we use the same academic 単語 in most cases. So you gotta try it out yourself bruh!
From my “personal” experience, a bachelor graduate that I know that are non-Korean and non-Chinese, 99% don’t/can’t get a job in Japan because of their language barrier. CS, I don’t know… Had one CS guy from Waseda but he went back to the US.
Unless you really want to(or have to) live in Japan, you gotta think, “is it even worth getting a job here? After all that shit hard work?”
It’s like me getting a job in France where the pay is meh 😂😅
Also, try British American Tobacco at careerforum. Google that. The corporate environment is English, interviews, and assessment centres are all English. The pay is good too! It’s quite hard to get too.