Study in Japan from Pakistan

This is the part that surprises people, and getting it wrong costs an intake.

For most study in Japan you do not apply for a visa and then enrol. Your university in Japan applies to the immigration authorities on your behalf for a Certificate of Eligibility, usually shortened to CoE. It is the immigration bureau confirming, in advance, that you qualify for the status of residence you are asking for. Only once the CoE exists do you take it to the Japanese embassy and apply for the visa itself, which is then comparatively quick.

Two consequences follow. The first is that your institution, not you, drives the timeline for the step that takes longest, so choosing a responsive university matters more here than elsewhere. The second is that the documents are assessed at the CoE stage rather than at the counter, which is why a Japanese student visa interview is usually a short formality and why a weak file fails months before anyone sees a passport.

People ask whether they need Japanese. The useful answer is that it depends on three separate things, and they are often confused.

For admission, English-taught degree programmes exist across a widening set of Japanese universities, and for those the entry requirement is an English test, not a Japanese one. Programmes taught in Japanese will ask for a Japanese proficiency qualification instead.

For daily life, English-taught does not mean English-speaking. Administration, housing, healthcare and part-time work are conducted in Japanese in most of the country, and students who arrive with none find the first six months harder than the coursework.

For work after graduation, Japanese is usually decisive. A graduate hoping to stay and be employed locally is competing for roles where the working language is Japanese. Treating language study as optional is reasonable for the degree and rarely reasonable for the plan behind it.

The comparison queries we see most often are Japan against Germany, and whether Japan is expensive for a Pakistani student. Both deserve a more careful answer than a single number.

Tuition at Japanese national universities is standardised and modest by the standards of the UK, the USA or Australia. Private universities cost considerably more, and the gap between the two is wider than most applicants expect, so "the cost of studying in Japan" depends almost entirely on which kind of institution you are looking at.

Living costs are the other half, and they vary sharply by city. Tokyo is not representative of Japan, and a regional national university changes the arithmetic substantially.

Against Germany specifically, the usual finding is that Germany wins on tuition at public universities while Japan is competitive once scholarships are included, and that living costs are closer than the reputations suggest. The guides below carry the current figures for each, with the dates they were checked.

• Whether the programme is genuinely taught in English, confirmed on the university's own page rather than an agent listing.
• Whether the university is one that routinely sponsors international students, because it will be handling your CoE.
• Whether the scholarship you are counting on is applied for before arrival or after, as several of the well-known ones close long before the intake.
• What the part-time work rules attached to your status of residence actually permit, and what permission is needed to use them.
• Whether your qualifications meet the entry route for international applicants, which can differ from the domestic one.

None of this is a reason to rule Japan out. It is a reason to start earlier than you would for a European application, because the CoE step sits in front of everything else.