Friends · the finding nobody expects
Your Japanese friends will not come from your university. They will come from your part-time job.
When the government asked international students where they actually mix with Japanese students, the winner was not a class, a club, or an orientation event. It was the place they went to earn money.
Based on JASSO's FY2023 survey · 7,867 responses · 9 min read
Shares of all the places named by the 5,554 students who mix with Japanese students at all, so they sum to 100. At Japanese language schools the part-time job figure rises to 40.6% — higher than every school-organised option combined.
Half of you are worried about making friends. That is not the thing that goes wrong
Feared beforehand: relationships 49.8%, studies 49.4%, money 38.3%. Reported afterwards: money 71.4%, relationships 17.0%, studies 11.1%.
Nepal has more than doubled, and vocational schools have overtaken universities — both in two years
279,274 students in May 2023; 408,069 in May 2025. Most published advice describes the map from before.
49.5% of you will struggle to find information. What you will find instead is one person's story
The three most-used sources are all people. Every official channel is at the bottom — JASSO itself is consulted by 3.7%.
The city you pick costs you twice what the school does
71.4% call Japan expensive. Broken apart, the choice of city moves your monthly cost about twice as much as the choice of institution.
The law lets you work 28 hours a week. At a language school, most of you will use nearly all of them
65.2% have a job. But 72.1% of working language school students are at twenty hours or more, against 19.5% doing a master's.
More of you will work twenty hours a week than will study twenty — until you reach graduate school
Two questions, asked separately, that nobody has put side by side. The balance tips at exactly one point: the undergraduate degree.
77.7% of you will choose your room by price. 2.7% will think about who you might meet there
And the data says they are right to. What the room actually decides is whether you will need a guarantor — 54.9% renting privately, 29.6% in a school dorm.
Almost half of you will be asked for a guarantor. Most of you do not have one
A guarantor agrees to pay your rent if you cannot. 48.7% were asked for one, and only 19.3% used a guarantee company.
Your Japanese friends will come from your part-time job, not your university
The four channels a school organises add up to 43.6%. The part-time job alone is 25.4% — and at a language school, 40.6%.
54.4% of you want to work here afterwards. What you ask for is not a job — it is a faster visa change
Asked what would help most when job hunting, students named the immigration paperwork first — and that answer has grown at each of the last three surveys.
At a Japanese language school, that is the share of working students putting in twenty hours a week or more
The legal ceiling is 28 hours. 27.2% of them report 25 or more — a band with only three hours of room above its floor.
At a master's programme the same figure is 3.6%. Same country, same visa, same rule. A different life.
Read the breakdown →Can you actually afford Japan?
Your family's support, your working hours, your hourly rate — against what students in that region really spend.
Should you count on a scholarship?
65.3% at a doctoral programme. 13.2% at a language school. And what each is worth once you spread it across everyone.
Which route do people from your country take?
408,069 students as of May 2025. Nepal is now 100,239 of them, up 54.7% in a single year.
One finding a week, from the data
No advice, no agency, nothing to sell you. Just what the numbers say about living here — before you decide whether to come.
Free. Every figure links to the government source it came from. What we do with your address.