They're back. Worries that foreign students would abandon Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and accompanying fiasco at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have proven to be largely unfounded.
According to Ministry of Justice figures, 70,170 foreign students left Japan between March 12 and April 8. No one knows how many more living in the Tohoku and Kanto regions suddenly decided to spend their spring breaks in Kansai or Kyushu.
With 40 percent of the 175,000 foreign students studying in Japan leaving the country within four weeks, the Japanese government and school officials quickly introduced a number of countermeasures to encourage their return.