Japan seeks more foreign students

Japan aims to more than double the number of foreign university students in the country by simplifying immigration procedures and hiring more English-speaking professors, an official said yesterday.

The government hopes to boost the number of foreign students from 120,000 to 300,000 by 2020, as Japan lags far behind the United States and major European countries.

Some 580,000 international students study in the US, with 356,000 students in the United Kingdom, 265,000 in France and 248,000 in Germany, according to the Japanese education ministry.