Hi everyone,

I am 18 years old from Holland and I am currently in my last year of high school. It has been my dream for a few years now to study in Japan. I have spend the last three or four years learning the Japanese language and I passed the JLPT N1 last December.

I would like some advice or suggestions from people who are currently studying, or have studied in Japan. Is the JLPT N1 good enough to follow an university course in Japanese, or should I go to an university that offers undergraduate programs in English? Also, which universities would you recommend for international students? By the way I am thinking of studying either business administration or law.

I have also been looking into scholarships. I have informed about the Monbukagakusho scholarship for undergraduate students, but apparently Dutch nationals are not eligible for this. Any other suggestions for getting a scholarship?

Thanks for reading and I hope you can offer me some advice or suggestions.

I spent a year in Japan taking classes in Japanese when I was a little above N2 level. My experience was that some of my classes were way above my head (history classes required me to read Kanbun; I also had some classes in classical literature) but most of them were doable as long as my teachers let me use an electronic dictionary for classes and tests. (I took classes in contemporary literature, philosophy, ceramics, music, translation, and linguistics.)

I suspect that law would be a hard thing to study in Japanese, but if you're as ambitious as you sound I wouldn't rule anything out. I think the hardest thing (and I can't give you any advice here) may be applying and getting admitted outside the usual stream of entrance exams, but different universities may be able to work with you on that. I feel like it would be a waste to do your whole undergraduate program in English in Japan, though; better to spend a year at a language school getting your Japanese level up if you need to, and then start a 4-year undergraduate program in Japanese.

Thank you for your reply. Finding a suitable university and actually getting admitted is my biggest concern at the moment. Do you think that Japanese universities in general are open to accepting international students (who speak the language)?

I don't know.

isora Wrote:Thank you for your reply. Finding a suitable university and actually getting admitted is my biggest concern at the moment. Do you think that Japanese universities in general are open to accepting international students (who speak the language)?

Yes Japanese universities are accepting of foreigners. In fact, there are many universities rolling out entire degree programs in English for the sole purpose of attracting foreign faculty and students.

Getting into one of the international programs should be no problem for you. But going the domestic way may be very difficult. It will require that you take an entrance exam in Japanese for the school you are interested in. These tests are given only 1 or 2 times a year and I don't know if they are offered outside of Japan. In addition, the level of Japanese required to pass these tests is significantly higher than the N1 exam. It might be a good idea to enter a language school for a year or two before starting university. I believe some universities have their own language schools that act as pipelines to their domestic undergrad programs - you might want to look into them.

And please allow me to give my words of wisdom as a mid-thirties guy in corporate Japan...

Start thinking really hard about what you want to do AFTER you graduate. Coming to Japan for university will be a great opportunity and a unique life experience but your career options may be severely limited by this choice.

I'm currently doing a year at Keio on their Japanese language program. It goes from levels 1 to 12 and they allow you to take normal undergrad classes from level 8. Level 8 is apparently "designed for students who have sufficient knowledge of Japanese to express themselves and understand average daily Japanese" and aims to put you at "advanced vocab (8000 words) and advanced kanji (1500)", a level I'm guessing you're well above lol.

Um...I'm going to be taking a bunch of interesting undergrad classes (I'm thinking linguistics, philosophy, history...) at Keio this semester so I wish you'd asked this in a month or so's time!

I did take a literature class (reading and discussing Soseki, Kawabata, etc) last semester which was all in Japanese and there was nothing particularly hard; sometimes you forget that the class is even in Japanese.

Regarding Law, I have a Italian friend who has JLPT N1 and is doing a normal masters in Law here (same conditions as a normal Japanese grad student). I think he must find it a bit hard because he was saying how his teachers are so kind to him and give him extra help etc. But he seems to be doing fine: reading massive law books in Japanese, writing his thesis in Japanese etc.

Regarding my own Japanese ability, I've never taken JLPT or anything. I did pass the highest level of Keio program so according to them I'm equivalent to a Japanese undergrad student. Somehow I doubt that but yeah lol. So like others have said, I think you should have no problem with classes. You might want to worry about the entrance exam though...

Well I'm quite surprised that the Netherlands doesn't have an Undergrad MEXT. I wonder why. The other scholarship you can look at is the JASSO scholarship. Its not as good as the MEXT but it will help with some expenses. I believe you can only apply for it after you have been admitted as a student though, keep that in mind.

Everyone else has given good info though, so I don't have anything to add. But as kitakitsune mentioned, consider what your long term goals are because if you find you don't like Japan after 4 years here or don't plan to stay to work, you might find that degree will make it hard to get a good job outside Japan. So contemplate your current road in life.

Thank you all for your replies. So it seems that it would be difficult to get admitted to an university directly. I guess it might be a better idea to go to a language school first. Are there any good language schools that offer advanced courses for preparing for the entrance exams specifically?

Ash_S Wrote:I'm currently doing a year at Keio on their Japanese language program. It goes from levels 1 to 12 and they allow you to take normal undergrad classes from level 8. Level 8 is apparently "designed for students who have sufficient knowledge of Japanese to express themselves and understand average daily Japanese" and aims to put you at "advanced vocab (8000 words) and advanced kanji (1500)", a level I'm guessing you're well above lol.

Would taking the Keio Japanese language program be a good preparation for getting admitted to an undergraduate program?

Many schools with English degree programs will also have Japanese Language Courses. Waseda, Tokyo Uni, and pretty much any of the schools taking part in the Global 30 will have Language courses to accelerate you so you can take Japanese language courses. The Global 30 was a program started a few years ago in Japan to internationalize many of the Unis and make them more accessible to international students. These schools should have English degree programs.

Take a look at the schools on the Global 30 link. You may have to still pass an entrance exam for many of these schools, but the exam will be in English.

isora Wrote:Would taking the Keio Japanese language program be a good preparation for getting admitted to an undergraduate program?

It doesn't prepare you directly for taking the entrance exam though you could definitely take advantage of time here to talk to the people in charge of admissions, collect study resources for the entrance exam, etc. The higher level classes are taught all in Japanese and you can take regular undergrad classes too so would be good preparation for the undergrad program itself.