09-28-2011, 02:04 PM
You are coming with a Monbusho scholarship? I believe you will have access to university housing, making your rent and utilities to maybe around 40000 yens per month. I'm guessing here, of course, but after I paid the rent, utilities and food, I had about 120 000 yens per month left from my scholarship. I bought two laptops with the money I saved (not my fault, they kept breaking up). Then again, my "post" was in the middle of the mountains, where I had to walk 45 minutes to the closest kombini and cross the mountains to get to the post office. I didn't have so much to spend on.
I know many Monbusho scholarship holders, and they all failed their entrance exams after the kenkyuusei period either deliberately or not, and got jobs in Japanese companies. I got the impression that this was more standard practice than actually entering a doctorate course, so you might as well start looking for companies immediately. You might want to keep this from your supervisor, he might question your motivation. If you have an M.Sc (?), you'll land a job faster than without (which is kind of obvious). Japanese companies don't know what you've studied, so you're going to have to come up with ideas of your own and present them. Might want to work on your Japanese skills, but it is not imperative in all the companies. Showing that you have enough language skill that you won't stress out in two weeks for not being able to do business in city hall is sometimes enough.
Foreign students are attractive to Japanese companies, because the visa can be changed from student to engineer while in Japan.
I'm professionally not into robotics, but I noticed that Japanese are very jealous of fields that are "traditionally Japanese", such as robotics and optics. That spells out trouble for you. You're going to have to outshine everybody in a way that does not embarrass the hell out of everybody. This will be extremely difficult, if you are in tech field AND speak English. Japanese in tech field rarely have self-confidence nor follow any research developments other than their own.
Personally, I think you won't have any trouble landing a job in Japan. Everything else after that will be open for interpretation.
|