The guide

Kyoto

Japan · Asia-Pacific

A research city rather than an industrial one — one of Asia's strongest universities, a basic-science culture that has produced a long line of Nobel laureates, and the country's traditional crafts and design still practised commercially.

Who this suits, and who it doesn’t

Suits you if you want basic research, an academic path, or one of the traditional design disciplines, and you want a small city you can cross on a bicycle. Look elsewhere if you want to work in industry after graduating — the jobs are in Osaka half an hour away, or in Tokyo.

The catch, and the way in

The catch

Small, conservative and short on employers: this is a place to do research and then leave for work, and the tourism load on the centre has made housing and daily movement noticeably harder than it was.

The way in

The same MEXT scholarships and the same national fee schedule as the rest of Japan, and Kyoto University runs English-taught graduate programmes that do not require Japanese to enter — though the laboratory around you will still be working in it.

Living there

What living here is actually like

Low-rise, walkable and cyclable, hemmed in by mountains on three sides, with the temples and the river doing more for daily life than any listing suggests. It is stricter than Osaka about how things are done and slower to accept outsiders, and the tourist crowds in the central districts are a genuine daily irritation rather than a postcard. Winters are colder and summers more humid than the coast.

How the money works

Identical national fees to everywhere else in the Japanese system, and living costs below Tokyo but above what the city's size suggests, because tourism has pushed rents in the centre. The guarantor and deposit requirements are the same start-up cost as elsewhere in Japan, and student housing is the usual way around them.Described in shape rather than figures on purpose: rents and salaries move every year and we cannot keep numbers true, but what is expensive and what quietly eats income stays true for far longer.

The language you actually need

Graduate research can be entered in English and increasingly conducted in it, but the seminar, the corridor and the administration are Japanese. For the crafts and design side the language is not optional at all — those are apprenticeship cultures and they run entirely in Japanese.

The work that clusters here

Fields with a real market in this city

Natural Sciences · Engineering · Humanities & Social Sciences · Arts & Design

Who is named here

Not a ranking and not in order of merit — the places a subject is actually studied and taught at in this city, so you have something to search for.

Kyoto University
- Natural Sciences
- Engineering
- Humanities & Social Sciences
Some English-taught programmes

Language of teaching moves within a cycle — check it on the university’s own page for your own entry year.