In 2008, the Government of Japan announced the "300000 Foreign Students Plan," which calls to increase the number of foreign students in Japan from the current 140,000 to 300,000 students by 2020.

Active international exchange is now taking place throughout many parts of the world, and there are now said to be more than 1.5 million foreign students studying around the globe. Of them, 141,774 (as of May 1, 2010) are studying in Japan. What is it that attracts these students to Japan?

High Educational Standards and Excellent Research Environment

The greatest appeal of studying in Japan is its academic environment where one can study state-of-the-art technology and acquire the knowledge that enabled Japan's phenomenal postwar economic growth. Whether it is electronics, Japanese literature, medicine or international business administration, Japanese universities and other institutes of higher education can offer course studies or research programs of virtually any field.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize to four Japanese scientists in 2008 is still fresh in our minds. Mr. Osamu Shimomura received the prize in chemistry for “the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.” The Nobel Prize in physics was shared by three Japanese scientists—Mr. Yoichiro Nanbu was awarded for “the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”; and Mr. Makoto Kobayashi and Mr. Toshihide Masukawa, for the development of the Kobayashi-Masukawa Theory and the discovery of the origin of the broken CP-symmetry, which opened up new ground in subatomic physics. Mr. Kobayashi and Mr. Masukawa were honored for the results of work done in Japan, an indication of the high level of research conducted in Japan.

Then, in 2010, Akira Suzuki and Ei-ichi Negishi won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their groundbreaking work with organic compound coupling techniques.