[Nyororin]

Wow, how bad a reputation the education in Japan seems to have...

It`s no worse than anywhere else. The university I attended here was certainly better than that which I attended in the US. The fundamental difference is that Japanese employers have education programs for new employees to school them in company specific policies and more in depth in the field they will be working in, where in a lot of other places it seems that companies expect you to be ready to work with full responsibility the day you graduate.

My personal recommendation would be to take an intensive Japanese course to bring your Japanese level up to the requirements for a regular Japanese university, and then to look around at a number of universities that have international student programs. You will gain valuable language and life skills, and also be able to decide whether you want to spend a full 4 years studying in Japan. If you don`t, you can always apply the language credit toward something else - if you do, you would then have a much much broader selection of schools to choose from.