Hello. I am an exchange student at a Japanese university. I recently found out the hard way that the class registration period is one day and one day only. There are no exceptions granted to students who missed the one-day registration period. I can still register for classes in the second quarter next week (I have one day to do so, of course), but I’ll probably end up being kicked out of Japan until those classes start. Is there anything I can do to stay here until then?
8 comments
Ask your study office, not here
Definitely ask someone in educational affairs, or whoever is in charge of your program.
Japanese universities always have “official” deadlines for things, but for some things (and I think class registration is likely in this category) they’ll usually have a lot of flexibility for handling people who do things late. They generally don’t advertise this, especially to students, since they want to motivate everyone to do it by the official date, but they almost always have people (especially exchange students) screwing up deadlines and are accustomed to dealing with that sort of thing.
In all my years in a Japanese university I have never heard of someone being kicked out of Japan for missing the first 履修登録 period. Hell, most of the time I was that person who didn’t register in time and I was able to graduate successfully
Go ask the educational affairs department, they can make adjustments for you
I went to the chair of my department he had to give me a signed waiver. That’s after administration staff told me, “sorry nothing can be done”. For me it was a confirmation postcard that came and I was supposed to return. But this was years ago.
If the office is telling you to fuck off, contact your advisor and the head of the dept. Trust me, this can be changed.
In my experience japanese people are not really used to “exceptions”, but they do understand that their rules are very strict.. so after you ask a couple times they will do their best to fix the problem or at least make it up to you somehow.
In the unlikely scenario that they don’t fix it for you, just keep asking and eventually they’ll get you in a meeting with the president of the university. He will still say “no, sorry” but at least you’ll have a meeting with the president of the university.
Just go to the classes you want to register and register them next week. You don’t need to do anything else.
I think you have some misunderstanding about the student visa. As long as you are officially a student at a university, your student visa is valid. It has nothing to do with whether you go to classes this week or not. For example, during summer and winter holidays, you would still be able to stay in Japan.
It’s up to university’s judgment that if you are its student or not (for example, if you have some severe violation of rules, it might suspend you), then it would become visa issue once you are no longer a student.
I doubt anyone would care if you miss the first registration period since you still have another period to register. Good luck and just chill.