MEXT/Japanese grad school experience?

[SuddenOsprey]

Hello all,

I've recently received a MEXT research scholarship and will be moving to Tokyo in April (for two years). I was wondering if there are any people on this forum who have done MEXT in the past, or have done grad school in Japan.

I'm from the US and did my BA and MA here, and work in a field that has me using Japanese on a daily basis (though my spoken Japanese is super rusty and I'm a bit nervous about taking courses in Japanese). Does anyone have any experience/advice they'd like to share? About grad school/university experiences? Thanks in advance!

[mrnicekid]

right now i'm in my final year of my bachelor's degree in mech eng. and although i don't plan on furthering my studies to grad school, there are some of my friends who are doing their masters and phds here.

for those who are doing masters, they are expected to do everything in Japanese but the PHD students are allowed to do their research proposals and all in English.

the masters students seemed not as busy as us bacherlor's degree students, but they do spent a lot of time in the research lab. the master's students are also expected to help the bachelor's degree student's thesis if they're under the same professor.

but the PHD students are so busy, they don't even have time to hang out with us that often.

in my univ, there are also some PHD students who did their masters and all in their home country, and come here to Japan just to do their PHD, and they're not so good in Japanese. but that does affect their studies that much because they can do it all in English.

Japanese language comes handy though when you're trying to handle machines because the manuals are all written in Japanese. One time i helped one PHD student to handle this laser cutting robot because the manual is all in Japanese, and he couldn't speak the language.