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Can you recommend a Japanese school?

March 25, 2022

Many of my acquaintances are in the Japanese education field, so let me refrain from naming specific schools here (lol). Instead, there are two criteria that can be used as a reference when choosing a regular Japanese school, which I will introduce here.

Please note that what I am about to explain is for regular Japanese schools. It does not apply to schools for residents who are not related to the student VISA or online schools. There are many reputable schools among them.

(1) Must be a publicly notified Japanese school
Notified Japanese schools are Japanese schools that can accept international students for the purpose of studying Japanese under the status of residence Student. In simple terms, it is a school that can issue a student VISA.
In order to be recognized as a “notified school,” a school must clear several regulations set by the Japanese Ministry of Justice, so it is relatively safer than non-notified schools. Of course, there are exceptions.

A list of notified schools can be found here.
https://j-test.jp/souran/

(2) Year of establishment is old
Simply put, the older the year of establishment, the better the school is likely to be. This is due to the following changes in the environment surrounding the Japanese education business.
In 2008, the Japanese government created a plan to increase the number of foreign students to 300,000. In response to this plan, an increasing number of companies established Japanese schools as new businesses.
And since around 2015, there has been an increase in the number of cases of Japanese schools being established for the purpose of supporting businesses in recruiting technical intern trainees.

Mainly for these two reasons, the number of Japanese schools has more than doubled, from 308 in 2007 to 774 in 2019.
Source: https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/275122

Entering into Japanese education as a business is not in itself a bad thing in my opinion. There are good schools among the new schools. However, on a probability basis, I would recommend schools that have been around since before 2015, preferably since 2008.

From the above, my recommendation is to go for a notified school that has been around since before 2015. However, management policies can change, so please use this as a reference only.