There were 38,882 Vietnamese students in Japan as of May 2015, an increase of 47.1 percent from 2014, according to Vietnam News Agency.  It was higher than the 29,000 studying in the US, which had been Vietnamese students' top destination.

Vietnam is now Japan's second biggest source of students, only after China.

According to figures released at the end of 2015 by an education and training working group of the Vietnam Business Forum, Vietnam sends more than 110,000 students to study in 47 countries around the world, spending an estimated US$3 billion for tuition fees a year.

Source

http://www.thanhniennews.com/education-youth/japan-is-vietnamese-students-new-top-destination-61172.html

British Council’s commentary

The followings explain why the number of Vietnamese students going to Japan boosted so strongly over the past few years:

• At government level, Japan and Vietnam have strengthened strategic partnership over the past four years, and education is a prioritised area.  Japan has been Vietnam’s crucial economic partner for many years.. In 2015, Japan is the second biggest investor in Vietnam with a total investment of USD 38billion. Two big investment projects in education from Japan were Tokyo Vietnam Medical University, a non-profit foreign-invested university which was approved for establishment in 2015; and Vietnam-Japan University in partnership with Vietnam National University Hanoi, a Japan ODA-funded project which would be inaugurated in September 2016.
• Increasing investment of large Japanese businesses into Vietnam in recent years have led to higher demand of labour force for these companies. Many Vietnamese universities in engineering and technology even received orders from Japanese industries to train human resources for them. Vietnam universities & Japan businesses also have many partnership programmes in internship, research and academic exchange, scholarships… to support Japan businesses in recruiting VN students to work for them. For example, FPT Software – a leading Vietnamese IT corporation, have launched a programme of training 10,000 IT students, in which 5,000 students will be sent to study in Japan and 5,000 students will be trained in VN by FPT University, in period 2015 – 2020. Training duration is 12 months in Japan and students are guaranteed employment at leading IT Japanese and Vietnamese companies.
• Japan also run a national scholarship scheme (Japanese Grant Aid for Human Resource Development Scholarship – JDS) in Vietnam since 2000, offering 2-year master programmes in English at Japanese universities. Up to now, 454 fellows have been sent to Japan.
• Also in the culture promotion aspect, Japan have organised an annual Japan Culture Festival in Vietnam for the past 5 years, as well as increasing other promotional activities to improve knowledge of Vietnamese students as well as the public about Japanese culture.