Anyone who is doing or has done grad school in Japan, please help. I work as an English Assistant Language Teacher in Japan. I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Dance and Japanese from the U.S. last year but I am thinking of going to grad school in Japan for Translation Studies or Business of some sort. I’m thinking of moving to Fukuoka but there are a few things I’m concerned about.
1. Going from an Instructor to student visa.
2. Paying for grad school – I have no money. How are scholarships here from your experience? Do they cover a lot? Do you have no choice but to cover the costs yourself? I come from a low-income background and the ALT salary isn’t high enough.
3. The grad school programs and scholarships targeted to foreigners that I’ve looked up, you have to either be a Bachelor’s student abroad and looking to move to Japan (MEXT), or majoring in STEM. I already live in Japan and I didn’t major in anything related to the highly funded tech/STEM stuff. Also the application fees are enormous. Any guidance on where to look/apply? I felt like I just wasted 2 hours on google looking up programs and there wasn’t anything of substance I found. I feel like I don’t know where to really look..
4. My Japanese is about N2 level, but probably not enough to survive all classes entirely in Japanese. How did you navigate that? Should I wait until I pass N1 to enroll in college? Ideally I would want to do a program in Japanese so that I can further improve my language skills.
5. Is it even worth it? Did grad school help you look appealing to jobs in Japan or secure a good job? I’m a new graduate who is kind of lost in what I really wanna do, and I don’t really know anyone in the translation or dance industry, so I thought grad school would be a good place to make connections.
8 comments
1. It is possible if you get admitted to a school
2. Depending on how prestigious and well funded the school is, yes there are options. I received about 125,000 a month for my studies.
3. There should be programs open to foreigners in Japan already. They probably just assume people who apply are from abroad. STEM in general will be the area most available in English, since it is a worldwide study and not culturally or nationally specific like Law for example.
4. Not sure on this one since my graduate school work was mainly conducting research and publishing papers in English journals.
5. It’s hard to say. To most people, undergrad and grad school is just getting a stamp of approval to get you into the shinsotsu hiring system and outside of exceptional cases, what you study probably won’t have much effect where you work. Unfortunately, there are many other unwritten rules about shinsotsu hiring, most notably age, language skills and Japanese mannerisms, and if you don’t meet those requirements, a degree probably won’t help you.
I wouldn’t advise going into translation as a career. It’s already very competitive, very hard to find steady work, and with the way AI is coming along, it’s only going to get harder.
One tip would be to start by looking at programs in universities you are interested in first, then see what scholarship options they have. You’ll likely get more detailed scholarship info that way than just doing a general search.
Also, a lot of the major universities have English taught programs at the graduate level now, so Japanese language isn’t necessarily a barrier. If you are specifically thinking of Fukuoka, Kyushu University has some (for example).
That said, grad school here isn’t necessarily a great place to make connections leading to a job in industry.
I think you can still apply to mext if you’re in Japan. You would just go to immigration when you need to switch status after you get accepted. Check out global 30 for all English graduate programs. Go for national universities as they’ll be cheaper.
Also consider doing a part time online grad program from your home state university while working here.
You might find this useful:
[University Degree courses offered in English](https://www.studyinjapan.go.jp/en/planning/by-style/english-program/)
* This data was collected through a survey of universities and junior colleges in May 2021, and may be out of date. For the latest information, please contact the respective universities.
Was an ALT on JET before going to to a public Japanese university for my master’s, now working for a Japanese global company. I’ll try to be brief in going through your points:
1. Visa change is easy – if you get accepted you’ll just take the necessary documents to an immigration office to change your status to 留学. You’d likely apply the way I did, using the regular 入学願書, and checking the box that says you’re an international student or have a non-Japanese passport.
2. There are a lot of scholarships for international students, but they don’t necessarily cover all tuition/living expenses. Majority of scholarships are aimed at people from (South)(east) Asian backgrounds and/or under the age of 30. That said, some big ones—like the Rotary scholarship—and other random local ones won’t have a preference. Rather, being from a background that’s uncommon in Japanese education (African, North American, European, etc.) might even help you to stand out in the application/interview process. Most of these scholarship require you to be a student before you can apply. **Additionally, public schools will allow you to apply for a 授業料/入学料免除 as an international grad student.** While I had to pay full admittance fee, I only paid half price for each semester except for my last because I received 全額免除.
3. You shouldn’t be looking for programs aimed at international students unless you’re looking for something entirely in English (in which case my advice would be to go to another country). If you want to live in Fukuoka, then I think you should look for the faculty of whatever you’re interested in studying at Kyushu University or elsewhere and contact them directly. Also if you’re going to google around for anything, be sure to do it in Japanese (even if you don’t know the precise word for what you’re looking for, you’ll figure it out in the process).
4. N2 level is fine as long as you know you’ll struggle a bit at first and will need to continue studying. Nobody expects your Japanese to be perfect, and there are likely international students doing short-term study abroad with less comprehension ability than you.
5. Japanese grad school has been very worth it for me, largely because I 1) graduated from a name-brand school, 2) wanted to find work in Japan through 新卒一括採用, and 3) I intend to continue living and working in Japan.
If you’re thinking about taking a similar route to me, then it really doesn’t matter much what you study except that you have a passion for it and can talk about it with others. Companies doing new graduate hiring conduct their hiring agnostic of academic background, so it’s more common to be hired into a position you have no prior training in than in most other countries. The vast majority of job openings in Japan are for new grads, which is why mid-career hiring is so competitive and moving between fields (i.e. from ALT into unrelated work) is so difficult for most people. To that point, attending grad school in Japan is a huge advantage.
If, however, you want to study translation studies specifically to become a translator and/or work in another country, I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s ample evidence that translation is a dead-end industry for all but the most lucky getting into it now, and I just can’t imagine taking on the expense to attend a Japanese university improves your chances any. Likewise, if you’re looking to work outside of Japan, then I’m not sure the expense makes much sense when you could start working in an entry level position in that field now.
Can you do an online masters? They are often quicker and you can do them for fractions of the price. You also can continue to work while doing it. Of course just be on the ball about converting the class time to local time and doing right by your group members. I was in an international group project and most of my group mates save for this one guy from Romania were on the coast through mode and didn’t participate.
Global 30 program. University courses offered in English. A variety of courses to choose from. This covers not sure about full Japanese college classes but might not be what you are looking for.