Welcome Reception for New MEXT Scholars 2026 Spring: Finding Your People, and Everyone Else's

‍

On June 13th, MEXT and JASSO held the welcome reception for new spring 2026 MEXT scholars at the Tokyo International Exchange Center. For most of the MEXT scholars in the room, it was one of their first months in Japan, and the event exists to make that first stretch a little less overwhelming and more welcoming, with MSA joining as a partner organization to help make it happen.

The afternoon opened with a taiko performance and remarks from MEXT, JASSO, and MSA, followed by parallel tracks of seminars, cultural experience booths with origami, tea ceremony, and Japanese non-theatrical performance, and an information fair from government offices, before everyone came together again for a networking party in the evening.

‍

MSA's role stretched across the whole event. Our members ran the opening and closing ceremony as moderators, staffed booths, and led six seminars on topics ranging from Japan's healthcare system, the path to permanent residency, budgeting and travel on a scholarship, to Japanese language learning and building a career after graduation. Other MSA members were simply around the booth as senpai, ready to answer the questions that don't fit neatly into a seminar slot.

‍

Before the ceremony even started, you could see scholars in their traditional clothes gathering in the hallway, one country after another. More than once, someone would spot a fellow countryman across the crowd and go say hello before even checking the name tag. It's a small moment, but it says something about why people actually come to events like this. Not just for the visa guidance or the seminars, useful as those are. It's the chance to find your own people in a new country, and in the same afternoon, meet everyone else's people too. That combination is hard to come by anywhere else. That's why events like this one matter more than a single afternoon of speeches and booths might suggest. Connecting new scholars to Japanese culture and other opportunities in Japan is only half the job. The other half is making sure everyone in that room, regardless of where they're from, gets a chance for cultural and experience exchange, to talk about the same feelings and struggles, and to know who to reach out to as senpais, leaving with somewhere to come back to.

‍

‍

Writer's thought:

‍

I ran one of the seminars that day, on learning Japanese, and it's the question afterward that's stayed with me most. I'd spent 30 minutes on JLPT levels and study strategies, and none of that was what she actually wanted to know. She wanted a way in: “how to join the community”. That question says more than any seminar content could. Language is the tool, but it was never really the point. What people are actually after is what's on the other side of it: somewhere to belong.  

It made me think about my own arrival in 2021 November during Corona time, with no reception like this one, just a letter from city hall I couldn't read, and one confusing conversation at a time. Sometimes, I felt there was a quieter wall between international students and Japanese society. It's not the obvious kind, with anyone shouting or excluding on purpose. It's built out of language gaps, unwritten rules, and small hesitations neither side quite knows how to cross. And the cost isn't just missed opportunities. It's the ordinary conversations you don't get to have, the sense of a place being yours instead of somewhere you're just passing through. It's also a feeling of loneliness, of not being part of something.  

I don't think a wall like this comes down because of one event. But maybe it comes down the way most walls do. One website signup. One hello in someone's own language across a crowded hallway. One person deciding to stay a little longer after the seminar ends, at a time.  

‍

‍

‍