Being a PhD student in Japan (and a non-native English speaker) I agree with many points in the article. Some frustrating things about my own experience:
- In my lab, all of the papers written by Japanese students have to be checked by foreign students (which are mostly non-native speakers). The quality of the writing is typically less than mediocre, with a few exceptions.
- We have a seminar every week in which the Japanese students talk in Japanese and will get questions only by the Japanese, while the foreign students present in English and will only get questions from the other foreign students. The environment is a bit toxic.
- I have a monthly meeting of 30 minutes with my supervisor (should be bi-weekly but he almost never has time for it). Those meetings are usually about which journal or conference we should submit an article to, seldom and barely scratching the surface of what my research is about.
- Teachers who give their classes in English will get many complaints from Japanese students. In the end most of them switch (back) to teaching in Japanese again.
- This year I will probably have to go to some sort of job hunting myself, but I'm mostly considering jobs in academia because of the job hunting process for companies seems inhumane. I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests.
I often blame myself for not speaking enough Japanese and because of that missing opportunities, but at the same time I am of the opinion that education on the masters and PhD level should be given in English because that seems to be the de facto language of international academia.
There are candidate pools that are "potential hires" with no assignment pre offer, and there are "specialist hires" where you know the team you'll be assigned to. Only accept the latter.
The job hunt process isn't nearly as bad for technical hires as it is for humanities grads.
I completely agree that grad level work should be done in English. I know a few brilliant researchers at Stanford who will likely head back to Japan to take academic posts because their English (and mainly politics of academia) skills just weren't good enough, and their taking the "wiser route out".
I don't know your field, but I hear good things about places like Hitachi Chuou Research.
- I have a monthly meeting of 30 minutes with my supervisor (should be bi-weekly but he almost never has time for it). Those meetings are usually about which journal or conference we should submit an article to, seldom and barely scratching the surface of what my research is about.
Don't worry, this is about par for the course (if you have a great graduate advisor, treasure them).
I would have to disagree with "normal"-- many phd students at top (CS) univs in Europe and US can get hired for research-relevant work - e.g. off the top of my head Goog Research, MSR, FAIR, Uber, Snapchat, AirBnB hire a non-trivial # of Phd researchers for relevant fields -- that said some fields are better fits, e.g. a typical exmaple being stochastic modeling tends to align well /w finance.
Then apply to those companies. If they're willing to apply for visas for Indian and Chinese grads, there's no reason they'd have a problem doing the same for Japanese grads.
- In my lab, all of the papers written by Japanese students have to be checked by foreign students (which are mostly non-native speakers). The quality of the writing is typically less than mediocre, with a few exceptions.
- We have a seminar every week in which the Japanese students talk in Japanese and will get questions only by the Japanese, while the foreign students present in English and will only get questions from the other foreign students. The environment is a bit toxic.
- I have a monthly meeting of 30 minutes with my supervisor (should be bi-weekly but he almost never has time for it). Those meetings are usually about which journal or conference we should submit an article to, seldom and barely scratching the surface of what my research is about.
- Teachers who give their classes in English will get many complaints from Japanese students. In the end most of them switch (back) to teaching in Japanese again.
- This year I will probably have to go to some sort of job hunting myself, but I'm mostly considering jobs in academia because of the job hunting process for companies seems inhumane. I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests.
I often blame myself for not speaking enough Japanese and because of that missing opportunities, but at the same time I am of the opinion that education on the masters and PhD level should be given in English because that seems to be the de facto language of international academia.