Japan Student Services Organization announced on January 18 that as of May 1, 2018 the number of foreign students enrolled in universities and schools have reached a count of 298,980 with an increase of 12% over the previous year.
Amongst the count, 208,901 students were enrolled in higher education institutions with a 10.9% increase from previous year and 90,079 students enrolled in Japanese language institutions with a 14.5% increase from previous year.
Looking at the nationality of foreign students, China stood first with 114,950 students, followed by Vietnam (72,354 students), Nepal (24,331 students), Korea (17,012 students), and Taiwan (9,524 students). International students from Asia accounted for 93.4% of the total, followed by 3.4% from Europe and 1.1% from North America.
From this survey, we see that there is a consecutive increase in the number of foreign students visiting Japan for past 6 years and that universities are on the path of globalization.
[Reference] Survey result on enrollment status of foreign students in the year 2018