Located in Bunkyo, Tokyo is what is considered as Japan’s most prestigious university, the University of Tokyo (Tokyo Daigaku) also known as Todai or UTokyo. One of Japan’s National Seven Universities.
The university was charted by the Meiji government in 1877 and was renamed “The Imperial University” in 1886 and then Tokyo Imperial University in 1897.
The University suffered damage after a major earthquake in September 1923 which led to major fires which destroyed 700,000 volumes at the Imperial University Library and 10,000 books (former possessions of Japanese historian Hoshino Hisashi) from the Hoshino Library.
The University of Tokyo is actually quite large as it has five campuses in Hongo, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. I admit that the hard part of finding things is that I was expecting something similar to my college, where you have one large campus and buildings within the campus. But with the University of Tokyo, it was a little more spread out.
Considered a public research university, one of the things I noticed when I went to visit the University is that there are many international students.
According to Wikipedia, in the fall of 2012, the University of Tokyo started two undergraduate programs entirely taught in English and geared towards international students — Programs in English at Komaba (PEAK) — the International Program on Japan in East Asia and the International Program on Environmental Sciences.
In 2014, the School of Science at the University of Tokyo introduced an all-English undergraduate transfer program called Global Science Course (GSC).
I had a chance to talk to a good number of them and what brought them to the University of Tokyo and for many, it was their engineering program, while others were actual professors employed at the location.
The university has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students and 2,100 are foreign students.
The Experimental Tank
Faculty of Engineering
General Library
Faculty of Engineering
Second Medical Building
Dr. Ueno and Hachiko Monument
Faculty of Engineering
I know for many people wanting to visit the Dr. Ueno and Hachiko monument at the University of Tokyo will be there to check out the monument, but if you have time, spend time at the University and enjoy the architecture but for college students, also see how things are for college life in the area and get a sample of what life is for students are at a Japanese university.
