Statistics showed that as of May 2020, the number of foreignstudents in Japan fell 10.4 percent year on year to 279,597 due to COVID-19.
The decline came after the number of foreign studentsenrolled at universities, Japanese language schools and other educationalinstitutions in the country totaled 312,214 in May 2019, marking the highestlevel on record and the seventh straight year of increase.
By country and region, the number of Chinese studentsstudying in Japan stood at 121,845 as of May 1, 2020, down 2.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the JASSO.
Vietnam ranked second with 62,233, down 15.2 percent, followedby Nepal with 24,002, down 8.8 percent, the survey found.
The number of students from the Republic of Korea dropped13.9 percent to 15,785, while those from Taiwan (China) were down 26.0 percent to 7,088.
Of the educational institutions, Japanese language schoolssuffered the biggest margin of decline in foreign student numbers in thereporting year, down 27.4 percent at 60,814, according to the survey.
The number of foreign students at universities fell 10.9percent to 79,826, while those at graduate schools were down 0.1 percent to 53,056. Vocational schools, however, saw an increase of 1.0 percent to 79,598./.