Learn how things get made
Automotive, aviation and robotics all run out of this region. If you want to understand manufacturing at the level that actually matters to a hardware founder, this is where it is done best.
Locations / Asia
Nagoya
Spend six months inside a Nagoya company while taking a course at Nagoya University. This is the region that taught the world how to build things properly, and startups everywhere still use the method.
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Partner uni
Partner TBC
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Format
Short 6mo -
Intake
August January -
Audience
Undergraduates and PhD’s
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Ecosystem
Hardware -
Cohort size
~25 students per intake
About Nagoya
Rearrange your view of normal.
Toyota, Denso, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Brother all came out of this one region. So did the way they work. The Toyota Production System, built here after the war, is where lean manufacturing came from, and lean manufacturing is where the lean startup came from. Every founder who talks about small batches, fast feedback and cutting waste is using an idea invented in Nagoya.
Large Japanese firms that spent decades doing everything in-house. Now they are working directly with startups on artificial intelligence, sensors and connected machinery. That shift is recent enough that you can watch it happen rather than read about it afterwards. NOC students have worked at a green-tech company printing circuit boards with metal inkjet, and at a venture fund backing companies across the Chubu region.
One student spent six months working entirely in Japanese, having never done so before. You get to know people through the university, through networking events, through a cohort small enough that you will know everyone's name in a week.
Why Nagoya?
Take lessons from the place that taught the world to build.
A course at Nagoya University
You take an entrepreneurship course at the Nagoya University while the internship runs. Four of your twenty NOC units come from it,
Open to PhD students
Nagoya is the only NOC location that takes PhD candidates as well as undergraduates. It started as a PhD programme and opened up from there.
Partner university
Nagoya University
You take a course on entrepreneurship at Nagoya University part-time while the internship runs. Four of your twenty NOC units come from it. The other sixteen come from the job.
Red and green LEDs existed for thirty years, and nobody could make a blue one. Two researchers at Nagoya University did it in the late 1980s and won the Nobel Prize in 2014. Without their work there is no white LED, no phone screen, no modern light bulb. Six Nobel laureates have come out of this university
6 months in Nagoya
What our students say
"I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to intern in Japan as part of the NOC Japan Programme. I had the chance to meet and interact with founders and engineers from all over the world, including people from San Francisco and even Singapore, which gave me valuable exposure to the global startup and tech scene and allowed me to build meaningful connections."
"I worked at a Venture Capital firm called MTG Ventures. It is a venture capital subsidiary of MTG Inc, which sells famous health and well-being related products such as ReFa, RED and SIXPAD. It was an incredibly valuable experience for me as I managed to work in a completely Japanese setting for the first time in my life, and I learnt all about the promising world of Venture Capital in Japan through my colleagues who guided me through every single day of work.
Justin Soon Jien Khye
NOC Nagoya Alumnus | 2025 | School of Computing
Muhammad Taha Zameel Bin Mahmood Shah
NOC Nagoya Alumnus | 2025 | NUS Business School
Practical info
The things you'll need to know before committing to Nagoya.
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Cost of living [ $$$ ]
SGD2,000 a month
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Accommodation
NOC supports housing search. Students often take over the previous cohort's flat
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Stipend & awards
Most students receive an internship stipend from their host company. NOC awards available via Awards & Scholarships
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Visa
Japanese student visa. NOC covers the full application cost
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Language
English Japanese -
Climate
Subtropical Four seasons -
Time zone
UT+9 -
Getting around
Subway and rail on one card. Tokyo is one hundred minutes by Shinkansen
Curriculum at Nagoya
Faculty-mapped courses for NOC Nagoya: units, intakes, and academic structure.
Apply for NOC Nagoya
Rank Nagoya in your application. Note that NOC reserves the right to assign you to any available location regardless of stated preference.
Start your application