The applicant has the opportunity to grow his worldwide capability and become a future leader by spending an exciting year studying overseas in Japan! Whether the applicant live with a host family or in a residence, he/she attend a high school in Japan and make friends with his peers in Japan. All this would assist him in improving Japanese language skills, his academic prospects and intercultural fluency.

The Asia Kakehashi Project (kakehashi means “bridging” in Japanese) is the initiative announced by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2017 to promote relations between Japan and entire Asia. The program provides full scholarships for high school students belonging to Asia, so they could live and study in Japan. The first 100 students arrived in Japan in August 2018, and the program is progressively increasing in numbers and length of stay.

AFS Japan administers all features of the program, including recognizing volunteer host families and dormitories for student placement, providing intercultural training and supporting students as they adjust to living in a new country. Students are selected on the basis of academic achievement, financial need, interest in Japanese culture and language as well as potential to be future leaders of optimistic change in their own societies.