9 great ideas from Japan’s NICT student entrepreneur competition

Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) recently held its annual business plan presentation event for college and university students. It’s called Kigyouka Koshien, which literally means ‘entrepreneur championship.’ The event took place at an CyberAgent Ventures’ Startup Basecamp this past Thursday.

NICT provides mentoring to students who have a passion for entrepreneurship. At the Thursday event, nine finalists from different regions came together in Tokyo, all hoping to walk away with the championship. Here’s a quick run down of what the participating teams are working on.

Judges:

• Koki Sato (CEO, Septeni)
• Ryuichi Nishida (editor-in-chief, TechCrunch Japan)
• Tsuyoshi Hoshina (CTO, Nihon Unisys)
• Masahiko Honma (representative partner, Incubate Fund)

Re-Ja ¶

Most of us wish we could spend more time with our parents, or perhaps we regret not seeing them as often as we’d like. Presented by students from Kansei Gakuin University and Kobe University, Re-ja is a mobile app that uses gamification to encourage people to talk more with parents. The app presents the same quiz questions to you and your parent, and if you both answer correctly, you will get a reward point that can be used to buy something for them.

Moku Tomo ¶

Japan is said to have more than 20 million smokers. Moku Tomo is an app that lets them to find a smoking area nearby using a handy map. The business model is based on sponsorships from cigarette companies, from pharmaceutical companies selling nicotine patches, and from restaurants which have such smoking areas. The presenters, from Doshisha University in Kyoto, are now in talks with Japan Tobacco and British Tobacco.

S.P.M.i Series ¶

Shingo Aida (of Aizu University in Fukushima) has developed an iOS app that acts as an alternative to seat posture measurement instruments. Such instruments are used to prevent those with mobility problems from developing posture issues or sores by ensuring the wheelchair is adjusted specifically for their body size and shape. An instrument of this kind helps people live better but is very costly. So Shingo has developed this app which is much cheaper. The target market is comprised of about 10,000 people in Japan and 80,000 more in the US.

Private tutor knowledge base ¶

When we hire a private teacher for our son or daughter, the biggest problem is usually that the quality of the lectures is very much dependent on who you hire. Tamiko Iwama (of Digital Hollywood University) wants to standardize the quality of the lectures by providing tutors with a web-based knowledge sharing platform. Learning materials and slides can be stored on the platform, and tutors can download them via the dashboard and customize their own lectures.

Code Library – Top Award Winner ¶

It’s often said that learning to reading code is like mastering a new language. But it’s not always easy since other people’s code could be written or structured far differently than what you might envision. And physical books for programming languages can be very costly and bulky. Code Library is a smartphone app that allow users to receive a lecture regardless of time and location. As part of its testing, Hamhei Horiuchi (of Tokyo’s University of Electrocommunications) has introduced a beta app called Code Library Lite, which will enable him to receive lots of feedback from programmers so he can refine the service.

Zero Gaku Shoku ¶

A ‘Gakushoku’ is a cafeteria at a university which typically offers decent foods at affordable prices. For students who usually have little or no income, expenses for lunch at the cafeteria can account for most of their spending. That’s why this Chuo University team has come up with the idea of giving students a chance to win a complimentary meal. A QR code is printed on the back of a meal ticket, and a student can then scan it with his smartphone and watch ads while he waits for the meal. The team receives revenue from advertisers and pay a commission to cafeteria owners participating in the program.

C@ndy ¶

The world’s Muslim community has huge market potential with a population of 1.6 billion people. A team from Yokohama National University hopes to found a sort of Craiglist for Muslims, in order to bridge Muslim communities around the world and here in Japan too. To refine the idea, the team has enlisted feedback from the folks at the Saudi Arabian Embassy and mosques in Tokyo. In partnership with Japanese travel agencies, C@ndy expects to provide information on travel packages for Muslim people, offer Japanese dishes made from Halal foods, and provide venues for praying during the trip.

Iron Beads Master ¶

Perler beads (or Hama beads) are a popular craft for children. But it’s difficult to build an original design on aa peg board. This team from Yonago National College of Technology hopes to produce a system that lets children create their own designs from their favorite pictures on an iPad. They plan to speak with Kawada Co., Ltd., a local distributor of Perler beads in Japan, to explore the monetization potential of this idea.

ShinBunet ¶

Elderly people in Japan (and in Okinawa, where this team originates) are eager to use digital devices to browse the web, but in many cases they can’t. In order to bridge this digital divide, the team has developed an app that lets elderly to browse news and updates from social media and blog on an iPad in a way that reflects the newspaper experience. Instead of searching a keyword to look for a specific topic, all you have to do is place your hand over an interesting story on your physical newspaper, just in front of the iPad camera. The app will detect which story you are interested in, and then collect updates from the blogsphere, showing them to you if they were a from a physical newspaper.

Pictured: The team from Okinawa National College of Technology presents ShinbuNet

http://www.startup-dating.com/2013/03/nict-championship-for-students

Colleges to double foreign students

Japan’s national universities intend to double their admissions of overseas students to 10 percent by 2020 and to also increase the number of courses offered in English two-fold to around 24,000.

The targets, including doubling the number of students attending overseas colleges to 5 percent by 2020, were decided at a meeting in Tokyo of the Japan Association of National Universities. The association, led by University of Tokyo President Junichi Hamada, will incorporate them in its guidelines for the globalization of Japanese universities.

“Unless we set numerical targets, (each university) cannot see how many efforts it should be making,” Hamada told reporters after the meeting. “We should promote the quick globalization of universities by taking every step possible.”

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/10/national/colleges-to-double-foreign-students/#.UTvmlxyLC3I

Entrance exam tutors go digital / Cash-strapped university hopefuls flock to free online lecture service

Good news for university hopefuls who cannot afford prep schools: A popular website is now offering free video lectures given by successful entrants of prestigious universities.

The site, "manavee," was launched two years ago by a University of Tokyo student to support those who may not be able to attend cram or prep schools for financial or other reasons. Currently, about 170 students from 15 universities nationwide are participating in the initiative to help teach over 10,000 users.

Student teachers film their lectures using their own video cameras and upload them onto the website as a free learning service.

About 3,200 15-minute lectures covering 11 subjects--including Japanese, mathematics, world history and geology--are available on the manavee website. In addition to basic lectures such as "Avoid failing with just two hours of study! Positive and negative numbers, literal equations and graphs" and "Pinpointing your weak points in English grammar," there are also videos that analyze past exams, such as "Breakdown of University of Tokyo's mathematics by a student of the university" and "Physics for Hokkaido University: Focus on entrance exams from the past two years."

The "teachers" are categorized into 30 teaching styles, such as "serious," "genius-type" and "passionate," to make it easier for users to choose the best tutor to suit their needs. If users register on the website, they can also send questions to teachers by e-mail.

Taketsugu Hanafusa, 23, a junior at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Letters, came up with the idea to create the site in the autumn of 2010.

"I thought, 'Not everyone can go to prep schools during a recession.' So I wondered if there was a way to help anyone effectively study for entrance exams," he said.

After launching the website with some friends, Hanafusa traveled to nine universities, including colleges in Hokkaido, Nagoya, Kyoto and the Tohoku and Kyushu regions, to seek support from students there.

Manavee's users are grateful for the website, with one saying, "Thanks to the site, I was able to correctly answer about 80 percent of the questions on the National Center Test for University Admissions."

A second-year high school student in Chiba Prefecture said: "As I'm being raised by a single mother, I don't know if should go to a prep school. This video-sharing site helps as I can watch the videos as many times as I want."

This year, about 540,000 people took the National Center Test, a standardized college entrance exam. Meanwhile, manavee's users, which include first- and second-year high school students, now total 11,000.

According to the website's operator, many users are keen to return the favor and teach after passing their entrance exams. In fact, one has already begun teaching since passing the University of Tokyo's entrance exam.

"I'd be delighted if this circle of learning spreads," Hanafusa said.

(Feb. 27, 2013)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T130226004423.htm

Japan to extend stay period for Filipino, Indonesian nurses by 1 yr

The Japanese government plans to give Filipinos and Indonesians seeking to become nurses and caregivers in Japan an extra year in the country to prepare for qualifying exams, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.

The special measure is based on the low passing rates so far for the prospective healthcare workers from the two Southeast Asian countries, who eventually hope to gain employment in Japan under bilateral free trade accords.

The move will benefit about 500 candidate nurses and caregivers who came to Japan without undergoing six-month Japanese language training sessions and help boost their chances in passing the Japanese qualifying exams.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2013/02/211082.html

Japan's Hope: If You Build It, They Will Come

TOKYO — The colorful education minister of Japan, Makiko Tanaka, riled Japanese academia last autumn when she denied accreditation to three new schools on the grounds that “there are too many universities in Japan.”

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She later took it back when her decision was met with fierce resistance. (And then she lost her job when the governing party lost a parliamentary election in December.)

But her comment left a lingering question: Japan’s youth population is declining, so why do new universities and departments keep popping up?

The number of 18-year-olds in Japan peaked in 1992 at 2.05 million, dwindling to about 1.2 million by 2012. During that time, the number of four-year universities grew to 783 from 523.

Even greater energy has been poured into thinking up new departments and majors. According to the Ministry of Education, there were 207 new departments, majors and graduate programs in 2011, and an additional 236 in 2012. In 2006, a whopping 482 new departments and majors were introduced.

The boom has been happening for quite some time. Since the late 1990s, more than 2,000 new academic departments and faculties have been created in Japan, despite an aging population. Although dozens of departments are scrapped each year, that still leaves hundreds added to the pile annually.

Meanwhile, existing schools and departments are suffering. According to the Promotion and Mutual Aid Corporation of Private Schools in Japan, a Ministry of Education affiliate agency, 46 percent of private universities have empty spaces. The group said that nearly 40 percent of private universities were operating in the red.

Japan has been making an effort to attract more overseas students, but the relatively small number of foreigners is not enough to offset the growing number of university spaces.

To attract students, schools have taken pains to give their freshly minted departments more modern-sounding names. Tokyo universities like Hosei, Kokushikan and Seijo have created schools like the Faculty of Lifelong Learning and Career Studies, 21st-Century Asian Studies and Faculty of Social Innovation.

Provincial universities are doing the same. Utsunomiya Kyowa University in Tochigi Prefecture now has a program for City Life Studies. Konan University in Hyogo Prefecture opened a School of Creative Management, known in English as the Hirao School of Management.

Akita University in Akita Prefecture is opening Japan’s first Faculty of International Natural Resources next year. Kyoto Seika University has been expanding its Faculty of Manga and recently added a Ph.D. in manga to its roster of degree programs.

Professors and administrators affiliated with the new, nontraditional departments say that they emphasize forward-looking, interdisciplinary programs that fit the 21st century. But some experts say they are there mostly to increase enrollment.

“There is a competition to win students, and universities need to show they are doing something by tinkering with their product lineup,” said Hiroshi Kobayashi, editor of College Management magazine, published by Recruit.

As new universities and departments gushed forth in the past decade, complaints have arisen among high school counselors who advise college-bound students.

“The No. 1 complaint among high school counselors, according to our survey, is that they cannot figure out what those new university departments and majors are all about,” Mr. Kobayashi said. “If a student expressed interest in a certain future career, the counselor can say, ‘Oh, in that case, you should apply to this program or that.’ But it is hard to know what the English communication department does, as opposed to the English language department.”

The term “communication” has become a popular term, Mr. Kobayashi said, along with other fashionable words like “international,” “information,” “environment,” “health” and “life.”

According to the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation, more than 1,200 kinds of undergraduate degrees were offered by Japanese universities in 2009; about 60 percent of them are unique.

Administrators of the new departments say they are establishing programs that prepare students for new challenges facing a society in flux.

At the Faculty of Social Innovation at Seijo University in Tokyo, students study corporate innovation and the roles of social groups and individuals, said Mitsunobu Shinohara, dean of the faculty. Students are exposed to a wide range of disciplines including business, public policy and social psychology, with innovation as an important common thread, he said.

“It’s critical to learn how to approach the issue and how to resolve it,” and not just to study facts, Mr. Shinohara said. He said that a more interdisciplinary approach gained popularity in the early 2000s, when his faculty was established.

New programs typically emphasize the thinking process and not the mere acquisition of knowledge.

“Japanese students take notes and memorize, so they can do well on the tests. But here, what you learn is not as important as how you learn,” said Harumasa Sato, dean of the Hirao School of Management at Konan University.

Mr. Sato said the main purpose of education was to train students to be thinkers, capable of exploring and finding answers on their own. “Students don’t exactly take courses, but rather the goal in this program is to finish five major projects,” which include oral and thesis presentations, Mr. Sato said. His school is about to graduate its first batch of students in March, and their job placement rate “has been pretty good,” he said.

To the extent that his and other new schools are experimenting with new ways to train students, the movement represents efforts to do things that traditional schools have fallen short on, he said.

“People criticize that what we do is not entirely clear. But are other established departments of, say, economics and law doing what they should be doing? Are they creating capable young people who can compete in the globalizing world?” he asked.

“How should Japanese universities be in the age of globalization has been one of the greatest themes for us,” said Kageaki Kajiwara, dean of the School of Asia 21 — whose Japanese name is 21st-Century Asian Studies — at Kokushikan University. “In this day and age, we cannot live without having anything to do with globalization.”

Even though classes are taught in Japanese, nearly a third of the 1,700 students in the department are non-Japanese, with students from China, Iran, Myanmar, Russia and South Korea.

“What’s great about this school is that you can learn about other Asian cultures and get to know the people from those cultures, and at the same time study Japanese language and culture,” Ehsan Sheikhi, a 26-year-old Iranian student, said in fluent Japanese.

Izumi Yamanaka, 22, who is expected to graduate soon from the Faculty of Social Innovation at Seijo University, said that rather than being confusing, it was an advantage to have an intriguing department name on her résumé.

“The interviewer always asked what my major was all about, which means you get a chance to answer and explain,” she said. “That’s one question other students don’t receive.” Ms. Yamanaka just got a job working for a bank in Tokyo.

For some experts, the problem is not that new schools and departments are introduced, but that institutions with lackluster reputations are not allowed to die.

“As society changes, new universities should be created to fill new needs,” said Bruce Stronach, dean of the Japanese campus of Temple University, which is based in Philadelphia. “The problem is that Japanese society is good at building but not at scrapping. There should be greater emphasis on discontinuing universities that cannot fulfill their quotas or no longer serve their original purpose.”

A few of the new schools have failed. In 2010, five universities said they would no longer accept new students and expected to dissolve. In 2012, a Tokyo college that was founded in 2002 said it would close in 2015.

Still, closures and bankruptcies are rare, and schools tend to hang on despite low enrollments.

Most Japanese education institutions — both public and private — depend heavily on grants from the Ministry of Education, which can be suspended or removed if the ministry deems that a university has outlived its purpose, Dr. Stronach said.

Shutting down universities and departments is often difficult because it means dismissing faculty and staff members, which management is loath to do. In fact, school administrators say new departments are sometimes built to make up for lost divisions, often a junior college or a department whose subject is no longer popular.

Mr. Shinohara at the Faculty of Social Innovation at Seijo University admitted that one reason his department came into being was because the junior college division at his university closed — because of a shortage of students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/world/asia/25iht-educlede25.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Tuition-free preschool education plan eyed

The government will establish a panel to study a plan to eliminate tuition fees for children aged 3 to 5 in a bid to improve preschool education and stem the declining birthrate by easing the burdens of child-rearing households, according to sources.

The government aims to flesh out the details of the plan before the House of Councillors election this summer, and implement the new system from as early as fiscal 2014.

The panel, which will function as a liaison between the government and ruling parties, is set to be launched in March. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly told Masako Mori, state minister for measures on the declining birthrate, to begin work on a draft outline for the system, the sources said.

The panel will be led by three Cabinet ministers--Mori, education minister Hakubun Shimomura and welfare minister Norihisa Tamura. Mori will be in charge of the panel's secretariat, while leaders from the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito's cabinet, education and welfare divisions will also attend panel meetings.

Following an initial meeting in early March, the panel will discuss contentious issues, such as when the plan should be implemented, scope of targeted facilities and funding, at its second meeting in April.

A rough "preschool education outline" will be compiled by around June, the sources said.

Among the facilities the panel will consider making tuition-free are kindergartens, day care centers and so-called authorized kodomo-en facilities, a hybrid between kindergarten and day care.

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has estimated about 790 billion yen would be needed annually to finance the measure.

While the consumption tax rate is scheduled to be raised to 10 percent in October 2015, increased tax revenues will be unavailable for the tuition-free plan. The government therefore needs to allocate other funding for the plan when compiling the fiscal 2014 budget or later.

Some within the ruling parties have proposed a plan to gradually introduce tuition-free preschool education by first targeting 5-year-olds. Other lawmakers have suggested reviewing the way increased tax revenues from the planned consumption hike would be utilized.

However, such a review would likely be met with opposition from the Democratic Party of Japan and groups of day care facility operators, among others. As a result, observers say the government will likely have a hard time securing the necessary funds to implement the plan.

Both the LDP and Komeito included tuition-free preschool education plans in their policy pledges for the House of Representatives election in December. The coalition agreement between the two parties also stipulated the parties should continue efforts to implement the plan.

The plan is also seen as an attempt by the ruling parties to win over women and younger generations in the upcoming upper house election.

===

Financing a major obstacle

By Teizo Toyokawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

The biggest obstacle in implementing the tuition-free preschool education, which the government and ruling parties see as a key part of reducing the burdens of child-rearing families, is securing the estimated 790 billion yen needed annually to finance the plan.

Revenues from the planned consumption tax rate hike will be unavailable as they will be allocated for social security spending, which includes pension, medicine, nursing care, as well as measures to address the declining birthrate.

Some members of the Liberal Democratic Party have urged that improving preschool education be considered as a measure to stem the declining birthrate, prompting some lawmakers to call for reviews on how tax revenues will be used.

Meanwhile, the government is pushing for a shift from traditional kindergarten and day care centers to kodomo-en facilities, which act as both.

In addition to securing finances for the plan, it is also necessary for the government to study comprehensive measures to address the declining birthrate by reviewing preschool education and day care services.

(Feb. 19, 2013)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T130218003795.htm

Online English studies benefit Japanese, Filipinos

Mohammad Moin tries to realize what he calls "intellectual fair trade" through his operation of an online English conversation school for Japanese — all taught by Filipino teachers.

Learning curve: Mohammad Moin, founder and CEO of PIKT, a Tokyo-based online English school, stands in front of a cafe near Shibuya Station. MAMI MARUKO

The inexpensive English lessons are offered to Japanese students via Skype, while at the same time giving employment opportunities to Filipinos — most of whom have graduated from top universities in their countries but have no jobs.

Moin, 33, who was born in Bangladesh, said that several years ago he found out from a Filipino university friend that the Philippines was suffering from high unemployment, especially among women and young people. The two came up with the idea of opening the online school, which is headquartered in Tokyo and a branch in Cebu.

With his team of staff from four countries — Japan, the Philippines, India and South Korea — he created 12 different curricula for the online school, which targets different levels and aims, ranging from elementary and high school students to people studying business English or for English proficiency tests, like the TOEIC or IELTS.

"We have contracts with 150 to 200 Filipino teachers — some of whom are single mothers with children. This was one of the best things to connect the two countries and to provide opportunities to both countries as a social contribution," he said.

He said that when he first arrived in Japan, he was shocked to find out that many Japanese could not communicate well in English.

"When I first came to Japan, I thought that Japanese would be fluent in English, but it was different. I expected them to be fluent, because they are the most developed nation in the world, and the second-biggest economy. I'm from a developing country like Bangladesh, but we can speak English on a certain level. I thought Japanese should be better in English, because they have better (educational) opportunities," he said.

Establishing the online English school, he said, was his own way of "making a contribution to the Japanese society," which gave him an opportunity to study and work for more than a decade.

Moin said that acquiring a foreign language doesn't come easily to anyone. In order to learn any language, one must put a lot of time and effort into it, he said.

"There are methods like 'speed learning' in Japan, such as attaining English just by listening, but it doesn't work like that. You have to be adamant to reach your goal," he said. His own experience with learning Japanese — which he is now fluent in — was spending more than 2,000 hours and learning 5,000 kanji in nine months. He eventually attained level 1 on the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test — the top level.

Moin said he first became interested in Japan through his father, a medical researcher who has visited many countries for his work. His father visited Japan in 1999, and told Moin about his impressions and experiences during his time here.

"He liked Japan very much, and talked to me — I was a high school student at the time — about the Japanese culture. Japan's infrastructure and safeness, kindness, politeness, and hospitality of the Japanese people," he said.

A lot of his classmates studied abroad at some point, and he said he was thinking of doing the same. His father recommended he study in Japan instead of the more popular, English-speaking destinations like the United States and Europe.

Then he happened to see a poster advertising Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Oita Prefecture when he visited the Japanese Embassy in Dhaka. He won a four-year scholarship from the Japanese government, and arrived in Japan in 2001, transferring from Dhaka University to APU in his second year.

APU is the first university in Japan that has a dual-language curriculum — with courses taught in either Japanese or English. The students are from 81 countries, and nearly 50 percent of the students are from overseas.

Moin said he made friends from all over the world, and in his second year established with his friends from Tonga and Canada a free "juku" (cram school), teaching English to local Japanese people.

"We did it as a volunteer activity. (The juku was the starting point for teaching) Japanese and contributing to Japan . . . for their language ability," he said.

Moin graduated from APU in March 2005, and first worked for a Japanese manufacturer based in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture. He was assigned to the business controlling department for three years, where he was responsible for expanding the company's operations in India and Thailand.

He moved to Tokyo in 2007 with his Bangladeshi wife, whom he had married in 2006, and switched jobs to the Japan unit of the German automobile parts and electric tools company Bosch as marketing manager. While working for that company, he attained an MBA from Tsukuba University.

In 2010, he started his company, PIKT, initially as a social venture with support from Bosch, and he quit Bosch in November to concentrate on it full time.

He has recently obtained Japanese nationality, and lives in Shiki, Saitama Prefecture with his wife and two children.

"I wouldn't have been able to bring the business to this stage without my wife's cooperation," said Moin, adding that his wife handles the administrative side of the business. "She believes in me. She never said, 'You can't quit your job (at Bosch).' This helps me and motivates me to move faster."

He said it was hard to manage his time during the early days of the business — juggling his work and the business with the MBA course and family life — and there were many times when he could not sleep at night.

"It was like a one-man show. I had to think a lot and bring all the concepts together — how I wanted the system, the website, the curriculum, and how I should establish my own firm in Japan and the Philippines. But it was a learning experience for me," he said.

He stressed that the most difficult part of the business was to train the Filipino tutors. "They don't know Japanese culture. If they don't know it, they won't know how to teach the Japanese. For example, Japanese are very serious about time. On the contrary, Filipinos are loose at time. You have to train them, because tutors are the backbone of this system. If they don't know the Japanese culture, and they don't know how to teach, nobody will be interested," he said.

To this end, he said he made 100 slides on Japanese culture — about time management of Japanese culture, what Japanese are sensitive about, how they behave, what kind of things they like and dislike — and trains the tutors for at least 16 hours before they actually start teaching.

In the next five years, he said his target is to reach out to "more than 15 million Japanese people" to learn English at his online school.

He said that he also wants to be a bridging point between Japan and the Philippines in the future.

"Japanese branding and knowhow should be spreading all over the world," he said. "Japanese economy is shrinking and you don't have lots of opportunities in Japan. It's time for the small and medium enterprises to go overseas.

"Japanese people should be able to communicate in an international language — which is English. I want the Japanese companies to make an M&A, invest in different Asian countries and take the lead of Asia. That's my vision."

He also hopes his company will be able to employ staff from 50 different countries in the future.

"It's important to have views from people from different countries so that innovative ideas will be born. Also, if we have staff from different countries who have studied in Japan, we can spread the Japanese brand all over the world," he said.

Universities receive ¥1.7 billion in donations from power industry

Eight state-run universities involved in nuclear studies have received donations totaling ¥1.74 billion from utilities and other power industry members in the five years through fiscal 2011, information disclosed upon Kyodo News requests showed Thursday.

As most of the donations were directed to specific researchers, including those participating in the Nuclear Regulation Authority's meeting for setting new standards for atomic power plant safety, some experts voiced concerns that it could affect the country's regulations.

According to the information disclosed by the universities, the University of Tokyo received the most, at ¥560 million, followed by Tohoku University at ¥417 million, Nagoya University at ¥251 million and Kyoto University at ¥212 million. Tokyo Institute of Technology received ¥104 million, Kyushu University ¥83 million, Osaka University ¥79 million and Hokkaido University ¥38 million.

The donated funds were used, among other studies-related purposes, to purchase equipment needed in research and to cover researchers' travel expenses when they attended conferences, according to the universities.

The donors included eight utilities, including Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Japan Atomic Power Co., nuclear reactor makers Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd., and other power-related companies and organizations.

Tepco has stopped making donations after the nuclear crisis started at its Fukushima No. 1 power plant in March 2011.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20130104a4.html

Aussie students switching to Chinese but Japan's soft power still inspires

SYDNEY — Japanese is the most widely taught foreign language in Australia, and students choose to study it not only for future employment prospects but for the pop cultural intrigue as well.

The economic importance of Australia-Japan relations in the 1970s sparked the growth in Japanese study and saw it rise to unprecedented levels in primary and secondary Australian schools.

However, this top position is no longer a sure thing. According to a report titled "The Current State of Japanese-Language Education in Australian Schools," by Anne de Kretser, director at the Melbourne Center for Japanese Language Education at Monash University, there has been an overall decrease since 2000 of approximately 16 percent in the number of students studying Japanese.

The reasons for this decline range far and wide, but one commonly acknowledged basis is that the general visibility of Japan has diminished. The focus for Australia, economically and for business, is clearly on China.

"The visibility of the importance of (Japanese) trade and economy, even though in actuality it hasn't been lost, that visibility has been lost," de Kretser says. "If you open up the Age or the Australian (newspapers), it's all China, China, China, so that visibility of China is there."

Kurt Mullane is director of projects at the Asia Education Foundation in Melbourne, and like de Kretser wants public awareness to be raised about the value in learning Japanese.

"Twenty years ago when there was greater economic focus on the relationship between Australia and Japan, people seemed to understand that Japanese was worth studying, because it's going to benefit in these kinds of ways," Mullane says. "I think that profile's been lost. And I think a lot of that is to do with the rise of China, the rise of India."

The importance of being "Asia literate" has been pushed by both sides of the government, as well as previous governments in Australia. Prime Minister Julia Gillard recently released a white paper on Australia in the "Asian century." One national objective it outlined is to increase Asian literacy. By 2025, every Australian student will have significant exposure to studies of Asia and all students will have access to at least one priority Asian language — Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian or Japanese.

Having access to a language is one thing, embedding it and stressing its importance is another.

Mullane says there is "a huge amount of work to be done to really get the message across that English alone is no longer enough . . . and I think winning the hearts and minds of students and their families in regards to the value of studying about Japanese culture and language is in its own right a tremendous thing to do."

Changing student mindsets is never an easy task, but it is even more challenging in this case because Japanese is widely perceived as a difficult subject to learn. Students are aware that Japanese (or any script language for that matter) requires a major commitment and you can't get by with just a cram session the night before an exam.

Another setback for Japanese study is the inconsistency of funding. De Kretser says that when funding comes in fits and starts, there are almost mirroring spurts of increased and decreased numbers.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP), funded with 62.4 million Australian dollars (about ¥5.5 billion), ends this year. Its goal was to have at least 12 percent of students finish high school with fluency in Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese or Korean by 2020. The recent Asian Century white paper outlines different goals and different target languages — Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese and Hindi. The ability of governments to make a long-term difference to Japanese-language education when funding and policies change every four years is questionable.

Carol Hayes is a senior lecturer at the School of Culture, History and Language at Australian National University. She believes governments need a longer-term goal. She is currently working on an NALSSP grant. "But it's a two-year grant term, and it's very difficult for me to deliver the key deliverables in a two-year plan to improve pathways between secondary and tertiary education, because we won't know" if the funding will be there.

A final recurring setback is the isolation of Australia. As an island, the very reason it should be more multilingual is often presented as its downfall. De Kretser says "one of the ultimate problems for all language teachers is that we live in Australia, we are quite isolated, and despite the rhetoric about being global citizens, students don't necessarily see that in their daily life."

Hayes agrees. "I don't think we promote the importance of multilingualness. (People think) 'I can survive monolingually, I can do business in English, ASEAN talks in English, English is the lingua franca so why bother?' "

Hayes is calling for language study to be compulsory. And until it is, it is difficult to see exactly how giving access to language learning will convert into students actually taking it up.

In spite of all these challenges, it is not time to bury the textbooks just yet. One clincher Japanese studies has over other languages is its often undervalued soft power. Hayes believes the soft power of Japan is something that needs to be wedded to the education curriculum in Australia. "The hard power of Chinese money, versus the soft power of Japanese 'anime,' manga, music, Nintendo DS games, shouldn't be underestimated."

The importance and appeal of Japanese pop culture is something unique that has not quite translated for other language studies. "Our kids are all watching Japanese anime, they're all playing games on DS that are Japanese games, and they're incredibly embedded into Japanese cultural perspectives via that. I don't think we've managed to wed our teaching to that," Hayes says.

The Nihongo Tanken Center, a Japanese-style building in a high school in Sydney, brings together the language and cultural aspects of Japan. It provides students up through high school with the opportunity to be immersed in Japan for one day — as an excursion away from their normal school — with all communication in Japanese. Depending on the students' grade, hiragana, katakana or kanji is used, and there are lots of team-based activities, as well as events like making "onigiri" and participating in quiz games.

During a recent visit to the Tanken Center by Mosman Primary School, students around 8 years old were participating in activities conducted solely in Japanese. From making onigiri to playing with the "kendama" wooden ball toy to engaging in "jan-ken-pon" (paper, rock, scissors), the students were attentive, engaged and having fun.

One of the students, named Isaac, said the best thing about Japanese is the sumo wrestlers, while his female classmate, Leila, said she likes it that Japanese buildings and gardens are different than in Australia.

Tim Griffiths, the center's coordinator, says he is confident of the future of Japanese-language learning in Australia.

"I think that Japanese will continue, and I think it's great that there is a recognition and understanding of the importance of studying a second language, and recently the importance of studying an Asian language."

He also believes there is room for both Japanese and Chinese in Australian education.

"I think as it moves forward, Chinese will become a stronger focus in schools, but I don't think Japanese will be forgotten. I think Chinese and Japanese will head Australian Asian-language learning."

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121221f2.html

Working in Japan Without a Degree - It Is Possible!

Lots of people want to work in Japan. It's an incredibly intriguing place, now positioned as the world's third largest economy and playing a vital role in the global community. It's no wonder people want to live there and see what it's like. Unfortunately those without a degree are very much restricted when it comes to obtaining employment in Japan due to entry requirements, meaning that funding life over there would be difficult. There is an opportunity to overcome this however, by applying for a Working Holiday Visa.

The governments of the UK and Japan have put great emphasis on building a strong and equal relationship amongst their citizens, and so each have developed entry schemes providing wider opportunities for people to experience a different way of life.

Under the "Working Holiday Scheme", a limited number of UK citizens who wish to stay in Japan up to one year primarily can be granted a visa which allows them to enter Japan for up to one year, and take work for up to one year, incidental to their holiday in order to supplement their travel funds. There are a variety of prerequisites for applications, and various documents must be submitted. There is a limit of 1000 citizens that will be granted entry on the Working Holiday Scheme each Japanese financial year, which runs April through March. Applications close when 1000 visas have been successfully issued.

If you meet the necessary requirements, then it's important to get your application in early. I've spoken to many people who have been disheartened by the working entry requirements for Japan. The levels of interest in living and finding a job there are quite staggering, and a recent survey carried out by TEFL England highlighted Japan as one of the most sought after TEFL destinations on the planet. The Working Holiday Scheme is a fantastic idea in my opinion, offering the chance for those who would otherwise be refused the chance to live and work in Japan (and vice versa) the chance to give it a go, and experience a completely new and very different lifestyle to what they may be used to.

Whilst pushing the boundaries of modern technology, the Japanese somehow manage to sustain their ancient philosophies and their strong cultural heritage. It's an amazing country, and there are various working opportunities available there. For all UK citizens, whether you're based in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland, this could be an enormous opportunity for exploration in 2013.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/alana-macpherson/working-in-japan-without-a-degree_b_2375459.html

 

Sony Loses Science Talent as Student Resumes Go to Dairies: Tech

Japan’s science students are eschewing traditional high-powered employers such as Sony Corp. (6758) and Panasonic Corp. (6752) to help make ice cream and yogurt.

They are applying to dairies. That says quite a bit about the current state of Japan -- and, some say, its future.

Sony, the Walkman inventor that once topped the rankings among the most-coveted jobs for graduating science majors, may drop further in popularity after it fell to fourth place from second in a survey this year of science students who’ll enter the job market in April, said Takuya Kurita, a researcher at Tokyo-based Mynavi Corp. Sony, trying to end four years of losses, is hiring the fewest recruits in 23 years.

“I’ve read about their huge losses in the newspaper,” Asuka Okamoto, a physics graduate student at Waseda University in Tokyo, said of the electronics makers. “I’d rather work somewhere else if workers seem worried at those companies.”

As Japan’s biggest companies kick off their annual campus recruitment drives this month, science students are increasingly favoring companies like Meiji Holdings Co. (2269), a Tokyo-based dairy maker. For the once-dominant electronics makers, a loss of market share to Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and Apple Inc. also means they’re losing future engineers and scientists needed to come up with hit products that can revive their brands.

“The gap between Japanese companies and Samsung, LG, and Chinese or Taiwanese competitors may only widen if the Japanese can’t hire excellent young talent,” said Yoshihisa Toyosaki, an analyst at Architect Grand Design, an electronics research and consulting company in Tokyo. “New products can only be born from new brains.”

Food Makers

Two of the three most popular employers for science students entering the job market next year are food manufacturers, according to Mynavi, an operator of job-hunting websites, which collected data from 16,451 students in the three months ended February.

Meiji topped the rankings, followed by Toshiba Corp. (6502), which makes products ranging from personal computers to nuclear reactors. Kagome Co. (2811), a maker of sauces and condiments, was third.

“Japan’s top manufacturers are being replaced by food makers in the rankings because the food business is considered stable,” Mynavi’s Kurita said. Science students, he said, “care about building a career at a stable company where they can work as researcher for a long time.”

Meiji, Kagome

In Japan, where many students accept job offers from large companies six months before graduating and may stay with the same employer until retirement, the nation’s unprofitable consumer-electronics makers are seen as volatile, said Yoshihide Suzuki, an administrative director at the career center at Waseda, a 130-year-old private school where Sony’s co-founder Masaru Ibuka studied engineering in the 1930s. That has made them less attractive to young job-seekers whose priorities include stability, he said.

Meiji shares have gained 15 percent this year, and its net income more than doubled to 5.2 billion yen ($63 million) in the six months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Kagome, maker of ketchup and tomato juice, has risen 7.8 percent as its net income gained 88 percent to 5.7 billion yen in the same period.

Fewer Recruits

Meiji, which traces its history to 1906, has been profitable since its creation by a 2009 merger. The Tokyo-based company has expanded its workforce by 8 percent since 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The company is receiving a “very large number of applicants” this season, Emiko Kurokawa, a spokeswoman for Meiji, said in an e-mail, without giving details.

The maker of Aya ice cream and Bulgaria Yogurt is hiring engineers for its plants and scientists for research and development. The company also makes pharmaceuticals, veterinary drugs and agricultural chemicals.

Sony, Panasonic and Sharp Corp. (6753) are recruiting fewer young people as they shrink their workforce. The three companies have announced a total of more than 29,800 job cuts for the year ending March 31 as they try to recover from 1.6 trillion yen in combined net losses last fiscal year.

Sony, which used to hire as many as 1,000 people from universities each year, plans to give jobs to 180 in April, said George Boyd, a spokesman. That’s down 35 percent from a year earlier and the lowest since 1990, he said. The number of engineers being hired will drop to 150 from 205 this year.

Campus Seminars

The Tokyo-based maker of Bravia TVs, which posted a 457 billion-yen loss for the year ended March 31, was the most- popular destination for science students for 10 straight years until 2003, according to Mynavi.

“Students don’t seem to believe entering Sony will secure anything for their lives,” said Waseda’s Suzuki.

Sony is holding recruiting events at universities and elsewhere and offers students opportunities to visit development sites and talk to company engineers, Boyd said.

Sony fell 0.9 percent to 820 yen at the 3 p.m. close of trade in Tokyo, extending its decline to 41 percent this year.

Panasonic plans to hire 350 people from universities next year, compared with 1,400 in 1992, said Chieko Gyobu, a spokeswoman. The Osaka-based company, which posted a 772 billion-yen loss last fiscal year, tumbled to 15th in Mynavi’s latest rankings, released in March, from the No. 1 spot a year earlier.

Panasonic is holding seminars on campuses and at its own offices “to secure applications from talented students” and is also strengthening its design, development and marketing operations overseas, Gyobu said.

‘Material Doubt’

“Although it’s true we’re facing difficulties after a big loss, we’re not going to continue declining,” Panasonic Vice Chairman Masayuki Matsushita said in a Nov. 26 interview. “Joining us now can actually be an opportunity to succeed.”

Sharp, the Osaka-based company that posted a 376 billion- yen loss last fiscal year and said Nov. 1 there was “material doubt” about its ability to survive, plans to hire 130 workers, compared with 240 last year, said Miyuki Nakayama, a spokeswoman. Sharp, which fell to 23rd from 16th in Mynavi’s latest ranking, is also recruiting on campuses, Nakayama said.

Samsung, the world’s biggest maker of TVs and mobile phones, doesn’t disclose its hiring practices. Samsung Group, its parent company, plans to hire 9,000 university graduates this year, according to a Feb. 29 statement.

Most students in Japan start job hunting Dec. 1, or about 16 months prior to graduation. Companies can start contacting students that day under guidelines issued by the Keidanren, Japan’s largest business lobby.

Starting Pay

Of university graduates who sought to start working in April this year, about 94 percent found an employer, up from 91 percent a year earlier, Japan’s labor ministry said in a statement May 15.

Japan’s jobless rate fell to 4.2 percent in October from 4.4 percent a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s lower than the 7.7 percent rate in the U.S. and 6.9 percent in Germany. Unemployment was 3 percent in South Korea, and the rate for China in September was 4.1 percent.

Sony paid a salary of 242,500 yen a month for new recruits who obtained a master’s degree in 2012, and 210,000 yen for those with a bachelor’s degree, according to the company’s website. Panasonic and Sharp each paid 228,500 yen for new hires who got a master’s degree that year, according to the companies.

Meiji’s pharmaceuticals unit paid 240,000 yen for recruits with a master’s degree this year, while Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), Japan’s biggest carmaker, paid 225,000 yen, according to the companies’ websites.

Yuki Okuyama, a 23-year-old physics student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said he’s interested in working with chipmaking equipment or infrastructure.

“I’ll probably check consumer electronics makers as well, though they seem to be troubled,” he said. Sony, Panasonic and Sharp “relied on a limited area of businesses and stumbled,” he said. “It would have been better if they had diversified.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net; Shunichi Ozasa in Tokyo at sozasa@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net

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