NEWS & GUIDES — KANSAI KOTOBA guide

EJU 2026–27: From Language School in Osaka or Kyoto to a Japanese UniversityThe EJU explained for language-school students: 2026 dates and fees, the four subjects and how they are scored, the two-year route from language school to university, Kansai universities, costs and the ¥48,000-a-month scholarship — plus what to do now that the November 2026 sitting has passed.

Every year, thousands of language-school students in Japan sit one exam that decides which universities will even read their application: the EJU, the Examination for Japanese University Admission for International Students. It is not a pass-or-fail test — it produces scores, and universities use those scores as the first filter for international applicants to Japanese-taught degrees. If your goal is a university in Japan, the EJU shapes your whole language-school plan: which intake to choose, which subjects to study, and when to apply. This guide explains the exam as it stands in November 2026 — the dates and fees, the four subjects and how they are scored, the realistic scores universities look for, the two-year route from a classroom in Osaka or Kyoto to a university place, and the scholarship that can be reserved before you even enrol. All figures are guide figures from JASSO, Japan's official student services organisation — always confirm the current details on the official EJU pages before you register. If you have not chosen a school yet, run the School Finder first: the right language school is one with a university-preparation course that matches your target faculty.

What the EJU is — and whether you need it at all

The EJU (日本留学試験, Nihon Ryūgaku Shiken) is run by JASSO, the Japan Student Services Organization, with the cooperation of Japan's education and foreign ministries. It has been the standard entrance exam for international students since 2002, and it measures two things at once: academic Japanese — the reading, listening and writing you need to follow university lectures — and basic academic ability in the subjects your faculty cares about. About 950 institutions use EJU scores, including more than 500 universities, according to JASSO figures published in September 2026. There is no pass mark and no fail: you receive a score for each subject, and each university and faculty sets its own bar.

Who needs it? Practically every international applicant to a Japanese-taught undergraduate degree at a national or public university, and many applicants to private universities too — including well-known names such as Waseda, Keio, Sophia and ICU for their Japanese-medium programmes. Who does not need it? Students applying to fully English-taught degrees — the University of Tokyo's PEAK programme, Kyoto University's international undergraduate courses, and the G30 English-track programmes at universities including Osaka University — are assessed on school-leaving results and English test scores instead, not the EJU. Vocational schools (senmon gakko) sometimes accept EJU scores and sometimes run their own admissions, so check each school separately.

The expensive mistake is deciding late. Students who study Japanese for a year and only then discover that their target faculty wanted EJU mathematics or science — subjects they never prepared — lose a whole admissions cycle. Decide your track before you choose a language school, because the right school is the one whose university-preparation course teaches the subjects your faculty requires. That choice is exactly what the JLPT study plan and the school directory are for: language first, but language aimed at a known target.

The 2026 dates are done — here is the calendar that matters now

The EJU runs twice a year, in June and November. The 2026 sessions were Sunday 21 June and Sunday 8 November — so the November sitting took place three days ago, and its scores are announced on Tuesday 15 December 2026. Registration for that sitting closed on 30 July, and JASSO accepts no late applications for any reason. If you sat the November exam, your next steps are below. If you missed it, the next sitting you can apply for is the first session of 2027, in June — JASSO had not yet published the 2027 dates as of early November 2026 and normally announces them around November, so check the official schedule page rather than trusting a forum date.

If you sat the November 2026 exam, do not wait for your scores to start the application work. Scores arrive on 15 December, but many faculties' international-student applications for April 2027 entry run through the autumn and winter, and some deadlines will already have passed by the time scores land. Check each target faculty's admissions page this week, prepare your documents now — diploma, transcripts, statement of purpose — and use the score release as the moment you submit, not the moment you start. If you missed November, use the waiting time properly: the June 2027 sitting is about seven months away, which is exactly the window a focused student needs to move from N3 to N2-level academic Japanese and to work through one full set of past papers.

One more timing fact that surprises newcomers: scores stay valid for two years, covering four sittings, and each university decides which sittings it accepts. That is why the standard advice is to sit the EJU twice — a first sitting as a rehearsal, a second with a full year of study behind you — and let the university take your best result. Most universities accept your best score from the last two years, but confirm the rule faculty by faculty, because a few only accept the most recent sitting.

2026 EJU schedule (JASSO, official)

The four subjects, and which ones your faculty wants

You do not sit everything. Each university faculty publishes the subjects it requires, and you sit only those — though sitting an extra subject does no harm, since scores are reported separately. The four subjects are Japanese as a Foreign Language, Science, Japan and the World, and Mathematics. Japanese takes 125 minutes: a 400–500 character essay (30 minutes), reading comprehension (40 minutes), and listening-reading plus listening (about 55 minutes combined). It is scored 0–400 for reading and listening, with writing scored separately at 0–50, and it is the only section offered in Japanese only.

The other three subjects each take 80 minutes and are scored 0–200. Science means choosing two of physics, chemistry and biology on the day, sat in one 80-minute session. Japan and the World is the humanities paper — history, geography, economics, politics and international relations, with an emphasis on reasoning and logical ability. Mathematics comes in two courses: Course 1 for humanities and economics faculties, and Course 2 for science, engineering and medicine, adding calculus, sequences, complex numbers and vectors. You cannot take both Science and Japan and the World in the same sitting, and Science, Japan and the World, and Mathematics can each be taken in Japanese or English — you choose the language when you register, so check what your faculty accepts before you decide.

The standard combinations are simple. Humanities (bunkei) applicants usually take Japanese, Japan and the World, and Mathematics Course 1. Science (rikei) applicants usually take Japanese, Mathematics Course 2, and two sciences. But faculty rules vary more than students expect: an economics faculty may want Course 2, a science faculty may waive Japan and the World entirely, and some faculties add their own written exam or interview on top. Read the admissions page of the exact faculty, not a general guide — including ours. On exam day itself, expect a long day: Japanese runs 9:30–12:00, Science or Japan and the World 13:30–15:00, and Mathematics 15:40–17:10, all paper-based, answered in 2B pencil.

The four EJU subjects (JASSO, official)

What scores do universities actually want?

Here is the part no official page will give you: a number. The EJU has no pass mark, so there is no score that guarantees admission and none that automatically eliminates you. Each faculty sets its own threshold, and most combine the EJU with document screening and then an interview or their own subject exam — the EJU is the gate, not the whole entrance exam. What follows is a guide drawn from admissions practice, not an official threshold: treat it as a planning target and confirm the real bar with each faculty.

For the most competitive national universities — Kyoto University and Osaka University here in Kansai, and their peers — a realistic target is Japanese 320 or above out of 400, writing 35 or above out of 50, and 160 or above out of 200 in each subject. For mid-tier public universities, Japanese around 280–300 and subjects around 140–160 are commonly enough to clear the first filter. The gap between those two bands is the whole game: the average EJU candidate scores far below the top band, and the top universities take candidates from the upper slice of the distribution. That is why the exam rewards preparation in subjects, not just in Japanese — a student with strong mathematics who sits it in English can bank a high subject score while their Japanese is still catching up.

Kansai gives you strong targets at every level. Kyoto University and Osaka University are the region's top national universities; Kobe University and Osaka Metropolitan University are strong public options; Doshisha, Ritsumeikan, Kansai University and Kwansei Gakuin are the major private universities, and each faculty publishes its own EJU requirements. Build a shortlist of three: one reach, one match, one safety — and check all three faculties' subject lists before you register for the EJU, because a subject you skip in June cannot be added to a November score retroactively.

Competitive EJU scores — planning guide

The two-year route: language school to university

For a beginner, the honest timeline is two years of language school, and the EJU sits in the middle of it. Months 1–6 are foundations: kana fluency, the first 300–500 kanji, and core grammar through your school textbook — the Japanese you need before academic Japanese makes any sense. Months 7–12 add reading stamina and your first JLPT sitting, usually N4 or N3 in December, plus the first serious look at EJU past papers so the format stops being frightening. Months 13–18 are the EJU term: subject study in Japanese, weekly timed practice, and the June sitting as your first real attempt. Months 19–24 are the application term: the November sitting for your best score, university applications, interviews, and the wait for results.

The language school you choose decides how smooth that plan runs. Schools with a university-preparation course — in our directory's JLPT and University prep category, for example MERIC in Osaka and JCL in Kyoto — run EJU-focused classes, mock exams and application coaching as part of the course, and many help with group registration for the EJU itself. A general conversation course will still teach you Japanese, but it will not teach you to write a 400-character essay in 30 minutes or to solve Course 2 mathematics in Japanese. Ask about the EJU course, the mock-exam calendar and the school's university-placement record before you enrol, not after your first term.

Two habits separate the students who get in from the students who retake. First, treat the JLPT and the EJU as one project, not two: the JLPT in December of your first year (aim for N3, then N2 the following July) is the checkpoint that tells you whether your Japanese is on pace for the EJU's academic reading and listening, which sit at roughly N2 to N1 level. Second, do past papers under real time limits from month twelve onwards — the EJU punishes slow readers more than it punishes imperfect grammar, and the only cure is timed practice. Our JLPT dates and study plan guide maps the JLPT side of this schedule in detail.

If this timeline changes your shortlist, run the School Finder now and filter for university-preparation courses — a cheap school without EJU teaching costs more in the end than a slightly dearer one that gets you into university on the first attempt. Then bring the shortlist to free counseling and we will check the real course content, the real intake date and the real EJU calendar together, before you apply anywhere.

What it costs — and the ¥48,000-a-month scholarship hiding in the form

The EJU itself is cheap by the standards of this journey. In Japan the 2026 fee is ¥12,000 for one subject and ¥23,000 for two or three subjects, including tax — and almost every applicant takes three subjects, so budget ¥23,000 per sitting. Two sittings, the standard advice, cost ¥46,000. The fee is never refunded, cannot be transferred to a later session, and if you change subjects inside the application window you pay again, so choose your subjects before you register, not after.

The bigger bills come after the exam. Each university charges its own application fee, typically ¥10,000–¥30,000 or more, and there is no common application platform in Japan — you apply to each university separately and pay each fee separately. Three applications therefore cost roughly ¥30,000–¥90,000. Then comes the first year of university itself: national and public universities charge the MEXT standard of ¥535,800 a year in tuition plus a one-off admission fee of ¥282,000, so about ¥817,800 for the first year. Private universities vary widely by faculty, roughly ¥1,000,000–¥2,000,000 or more a year. All of these are guide figures — confirm the live amounts on each university's own admissions page.

Now the part most students miss. When you register for the EJU, the form asks whether you want to be considered for the Monbukagakusho Honors Scholarship for Privately-Financed International Students — tick that box. Under JASSO's reservation programme, students with excellent EJU results can have the scholarship of ¥48,000 a month reserved before they even enrol, for 12 or 6 months depending on the enrolment period. Over a 12-month year that is ¥576,000 — more than two-thirds of a national university's first-year tuition. It is competitive and selection depends on your EJU score and your university, but it costs nothing to tick the box, and students who skip it cannot be selected later. Beyond it, many national universities reduce or waive tuition for international students with strong records — ask each university about tuition exemption (jugyoryo menjo) — and our scholarships guide covers the wider funding landscape, including MEXT, which runs on a separate embassy-based route.

A worked example pulls it together. Two EJU sittings at ¥23,000 each, three university applications at about ¥20,000 each, and a first year at a national university at ¥817,800 come to roughly ¥924,000 before scholarships. With a reserved JASSO scholarship of ¥48,000 a month for 12 months, ¥576,000 of that is covered — and part-time work of up to 28 hours a week on a student visa, covered in our part-time work guide, covers much of the living cost on top. The EJU is not just an exam: it is the cheapest leverage in the whole journey, because one strong score can change both which universities accept you and how much of the bill you actually pay.

The route to university, in guide figures

After the exam: applications, interviews and your visa

The exam is the gate; the application is the rest of the journey. Japanese universities run a separate admissions process for international students, usually called gaikokujin ryugakusei tokubetsu senko. It has two steps: the application (shutsugan), where you submit your EJU examination voucher or score certificate, high-school diploma and transcripts with translations, a statement of purpose (shibo riyu-sho), sometimes a recommendation letter, and proof of the application fee — and then the entrance examination (nyushi), which usually means an interview in Japanese, sometimes with a short essay or a written test in your subject. Common interview questions are the ones you can prepare for: why Japan, why this university, why this faculty, and what you plan to do after graduation. Answer them in Japanese, in your own words, and practise them as mock interviews at your language school before the real one.

Results (gokaku happyo) are announced on the date in each faculty's admissions information — check it and mark it in your calendar — and then come the enrolment procedures and the first payments, including the admission fee. If you are accepted by more than one university, remember that each one has its own enrolment deadline and its own non-refundable payments, so decide in advance which acceptance you would actually take.

Your visa continues through all of this. The Student status of residence you hold at language school carries over: when you move to a university, you apply for an extension of your period of stay with the new university's documents, and you notify immigration of the change of institution as required. Two things protect that extension more than anything else: attendance at your language school, which immigration does look at, and a clean, honest application history. Keep your attendance high, keep every document from the EJU and each application, and read our student-visa guide for the COE and renewal mechanics that got you here in the first place.

FAQ

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Fees are taken from each school's official website (checked November 2026) and are confirmed, together with seat availability, during free counseling before you apply. KANSAI KOTOBA is an independent counseling service — listing a school does not imply a formal partnership or agency agreement with it. We never charge students: schools pay us a referral fee, and your tuition is the same as applying directly.