Foreign students leaving Japan

TOKYO, April 21 (UPI) -- More than 4,300 foreign students have left Japan since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that also damaged a nuclear power plant, a survey indicates.

Tokyo's Yomiuri Shimbun said it surveyed 71 universities with sizable foreign student enrollments and found that many schools had lost the majority of their foreign students.

The students fled not only the areas affected by the disaster that killed more than 13,000 people, but also in the Tokyo metro area and in western Japan.

"It seems students have been told by their parents not to go to Japan, although they want to do so," said Yumiko Iizuka, an official at Sofia University in Tokyo, where about 10 percent of all students are from other countries.

Sofia University expected 149 foreign exchange students, but 120, more than 80 percent, canceled plans to come to the school.

The University of Tokyo said 11 of 28 foreign students have been absent since the spring term started earlier this month.

Universities in the disaster-struck region saw the largest declines in foreign student enrollment.

Tohoku University in Sendai had 1,499 foreign students on March 11, when the 9-magnitude quake and tsunami struck the area. More than 1,000 of them have since left Japan. Before the quake, 270 lived in the school's dormitory for foreign students; just 16 remained Wednesday.

Fukushima University, where the damaged nuclear reactors leaked radiation into the atmosphere, lost 120 of its 177 foreign students.

"We don't know how many foreign students will come back," a school official said.