I just finished my MS doing ML research at tokyo tech (and also went to georgia tech!!), and I don't think I would honestly recommend it to someone unless they know they primarily want to live in Japan. I think it can be worth it, I feel like I changed quite a lot as a result of my 2 years there. The author's criticisms are valid but probably understated. I happened to work for a fairly wealthy lab that could pay me a salary, but this is not the norm for masters students, and even some PhD students don't get paid anything. Many, if not most graduate students I knew were working one or more part time jobs to make ends meet. I'm sure that the author's nice tech job and well-located home contributed to their enjoyment -- a lot of people have to live in Yokohama or west tokyo with > 1-2hrs of commute.
In my case, I had worked in Japan for a year at a domestic megacorp (which is how I met my prof), had attended a few conferences, was very fluent in Japanese, and knew with certainty that the enjoyment of living in Japan would make up for any objective drawbacks.
My main issue with grad school is that except for an exceedingly small number of labs that regularly aim for top conferences, the process feels very un-serious. I think the standards are low; very few professors care a lot about doing really good work; the classes are unnecessary, low quality (nobody cared about teaching much, in my dept), mostly surface level; and there's not much of a bar for student research. I'd argue that domestic conference work is not only less prestigious an the author says, but it's also in most cases worse and less interesting, which is the bigger problem. This might be exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of undergrads begin research in their last year and continue into the MS program by default so there are generally a lot of less motivated students. I still had a few exceptionally smart colleagues, but I never collaborated with them (in fact, our lab has hardly ever published a paper with >2 authors). I generally felt that their hard work was misplaced.
About a year into my MS, after pushing a bit of slop at international conferences, I more or less gave up on working on my project and got a remote job based in the US. Like the article says, it is exceptionally convenient that you can work for 28 hours a week on a student visa, since 28 hours of a US tech job is more than enough to support a nice lifestyle for 1 in tokyo. I might genuinely have dropped out and moved back home if it wasn't for it. DO get the auth at immigration time, it's much more annoying later.
In any case, I really enjoyed it in hindsight. As a final note, Science Tokyo is very simple to enter for international students -- the only requirement is that you find a professor willing to take you in. There are many structures in place for international students and I'd say it's fairly nice and comfortable.
PS: Maybe someone will enjoy reading my blog post about life at Science Tokyo/Japan: <a href="https://esrh.me/posts/2025-11-15-year-recap" rel="nofollow">https://esrh.me/posts/2025-11-15-year-recap
Thanks for your comments here. I agree that a lot of labs were pretty unserious. One other thing that I should have mentioned in the article is that labs in Japan are like little contracting businesses, and the professors have to find funding in a way that seems much harder than the US. This leads to a lot of variability in the financial situations of labs, so yeah my concerns about funding/etc were probably understated (and my lab was likely one of the best funded in the nation).
As for domestic conferences, typically my lab used them as staging for their papers that they would send to top international conferences, so the quality was still pretty good. I do get the sense that the quality outside of the T1 labs drops off pretty quickly.
> ... but I never collaborated with them (in fact, our lab has hardly ever published a paper with >2 authors).
This was something I had in the original draft of the article, but it was removed for being a bit niche. TiTech (and perhaps other schools, but not universal) had a restriction in place where only one student could claim primary authorship on a paper for the purposes of their graduation requirements (typically 1 conference + 1 journal paper). Even if two students contributed equally, they had to sign a form designating one of them the "true" primary author. This massively discourages collaboration. I absolutely hated this policy, but there was basically nothing I could do at an institutional level to change it. I ended up being able to collaborate pretty freely, since I reached my publication requirements quickly, but this policy really hurts students who do their PhD in Japan just because of the numbers game. If two candidates are up for a position, and one has N papers (all first author, but 2-3 authors max) and the other has N + 10 papers (with <N first author, but all with huge groups), the one with N papers is at a disadvantage at first glance. And it just removes one of the primary skills you need to cultivate during a PhD: collaborating with other researchers.
esrh · · focus · HN ↗
In my case, I had worked in Japan for a year at a domestic megacorp (which is how I met my prof), had attended a few conferences, was very fluent in Japanese, and knew with certainty that the enjoyment of living in Japan would make up for any objective drawbacks.
My main issue with grad school is that except for an exceedingly small number of labs that regularly aim for top conferences, the process feels very un-serious. I think the standards are low; very few professors care a lot about doing really good work; the classes are unnecessary, low quality (nobody cared about teaching much, in my dept), mostly surface level; and there's not much of a bar for student research. I'd argue that domestic conference work is not only less prestigious an the author says, but it's also in most cases worse and less interesting, which is the bigger problem. This might be exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of undergrads begin research in their last year and continue into the MS program by default so there are generally a lot of less motivated students. I still had a few exceptionally smart colleagues, but I never collaborated with them (in fact, our lab has hardly ever published a paper with >2 authors). I generally felt that their hard work was misplaced.
About a year into my MS, after pushing a bit of slop at international conferences, I more or less gave up on working on my project and got a remote job based in the US. Like the article says, it is exceptionally convenient that you can work for 28 hours a week on a student visa, since 28 hours of a US tech job is more than enough to support a nice lifestyle for 1 in tokyo. I might genuinely have dropped out and moved back home if it wasn't for it. DO get the auth at immigration time, it's much more annoying later.
In any case, I really enjoyed it in hindsight. As a final note, Science Tokyo is very simple to enter for international students -- the only requirement is that you find a professor willing to take you in. There are many structures in place for international students and I'd say it's fairly nice and comfortable.
PS: Maybe someone will enjoy reading my blog post about life at Science Tokyo/Japan: <a href="https://esrh.me/posts/2025-11-15-year-recap" rel="nofollow">https://esrh.me/posts/2025-11-15-year-recap
mcyc · · focus · HN ↗
Thanks for your comments here. I agree that a lot of labs were pretty unserious. One other thing that I should have mentioned in the article is that labs in Japan are like little contracting businesses, and the professors have to find funding in a way that seems much harder than the US. This leads to a lot of variability in the financial situations of labs, so yeah my concerns about funding/etc were probably understated (and my lab was likely one of the best funded in the nation).
As for domestic conferences, typically my lab used them as staging for their papers that they would send to top international conferences, so the quality was still pretty good. I do get the sense that the quality outside of the T1 labs drops off pretty quickly.
> ... but I never collaborated with them (in fact, our lab has hardly ever published a paper with >2 authors).
This was something I had in the original draft of the article, but it was removed for being a bit niche. TiTech (and perhaps other schools, but not universal) had a restriction in place where only one student could claim primary authorship on a paper for the purposes of their graduation requirements (typically 1 conference + 1 journal paper). Even if two students contributed equally, they had to sign a form designating one of them the "true" primary author. This massively discourages collaboration. I absolutely hated this policy, but there was basically nothing I could do at an institutional level to change it. I ended up being able to collaborate pretty freely, since I reached my publication requirements quickly, but this policy really hurts students who do their PhD in Japan just because of the numbers game. If two candidates are up for a position, and one has N papers (all first author, but 2-3 authors max) and the other has N + 10 papers (with <N first author, but all with huge groups), the one with N papers is at a disadvantage at first glance. And it just removes one of the primary skills you need to cultivate during a PhD: collaborating with other researchers.