Do NOT join a japanese university in October.
I must have blogged about this before, but for the sake of clarity, I’ll repeat it here. If you are, or plan to be a Monbukagakusho scholarship student in Japan, DO NOT take the chance of enrolling in mid-term (october).
Monbusho scholarships for graduate students (be they master or phd) are divided in two phases. At first, you study japanese, and for your entrance examination. Then, after you take the entrance examination, you’ll enroll in the master or phd course proper.
Most japanese entrance examinations happens in august. The normal period for classes is april, but some universities allow for the student to start their classes in october.
When I made my entrance examination, I was encouraged to start my course in october. Since my japanese was already functional, it was thought that I wouldn’t need another 6 months of studying japanese. Also, I could stop “goofing around”, and get right into the Real Work ™.
However, there are some caveats - enrolling in october isn’t normal in the educational system here. And in japan, not being normal is a VERY big liability. Today I had to fill the forms for my scholarship extension. My scholarship goes until april, and these forms are sent every end of year.
If I had enrolled in april last year, I could just ask for one more year extension, and then next year I could ask for another extension for my phd. However, since I enrolled in october, I’ll need to fill two forms, NOW - one to extend the scholarship until september next year (6 months), and another to extend it from semptember next year until the end of my phd.
The forms are actually identical, and I’ll have to fill most fields identically - with the exception of two fields, in 4 forms - anyone wanna bet on the chance of these two forms being messed up? 
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Hein!?!? Perai… vc nao passou no teste no ano que a gente tava ai? E comecou em outubro??? Mas comecar em abril do ano passado, nao foi exatamente quando vc chegou no jp?? Como eh essa historia?
October 28th, 2006 at 2:04 am
No sense. O Claus anda estudando muito ultimamente e anda confundindo as coisas. Se vc tivesse entrado em abril do ano passado vc soh precisaria pedir extensao da bolsa apenas 1x pra doutorado, certo? Mas pra isso vc nao teria feito o curso intensivo de japones e nem teria feito o teste de admissao, ou seja, teria q ter sido admitido antes de mesmo de chegar ao japao. Dessa forma, vc tinha 2 opcoes, entrar em outubro do ano passado ou em abril desse ano. Em ambas as opcoes vc teria que pedir a extensao da bolsa 1x ate o termino do mestrado (ate set do ano q vem ou ate abril de 2008) e 1x para o doutorado, certo? O q dizem ser vantajoso ao entrar em abril eh apenas pelo fato de ser melhor para procurar emprego no Japao.
October 28th, 2006 at 2:14 am
Alias, eu nao entendi p q eh preciso ped ir extensao da bolsa ate o final do doutorado agora ao inves do ano q vem? Por acaso eles aprovam novas bolsas e os pedidos de extensao apenas 1x por ano? ^~
October 29th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Reginaldo - Exatamente isso, eles so aprovam bolsas novas e pedidos de extensao uma vez por ano. E eles nao aprovam um conjunto extensao + doutorado. Logo eu tenho que abrir dois processos paralelos agora.