good advices:

following are excerpts from the two emails I received from acquaintances about the interview process for the monbushou scholarships:

Exhibit A: as regards the content of the majority of the questions, are they about the proposed "research" or about "you the applicant"?

Scholarship recipient A:
"you, generally."
Later he lists some questions he remembers:
"2) what was the most challenging experience you had on
jet? how did you deal with it?

3) why do you think your proposed research is
important?

4) if accepted, what do you plan to do once you
graduate?"

scholarship recipient b:
"I remember talking almost 85% about my research proposal."

Exhibit B, regarding the formality of the interview process:

Recipient A:
"the atmosphere was fairly jovial."

Recipient B:
"Pretty formal."


Exhibit C, was the interview conducted in English or Japanese?:

Recipient A:
"the interview was mostly in english,
but the japanese woman asked me one question in
japanese at the end of the interview."

Recipient B:
"I
did mine in Japanese, but I believe that you are supposed
to do them in English. I think they started speaking to me
in Japanese as a test, and then we just never switched
over."

Well, they sort of agree on the English bit.
I'm very grateful for any advice from people with concrete experience, of course. There's just something comical about getting the opposite advice from two equally reliable sources. There is a tiger behind one door and a lady with a whole lot of scholarship money behind the other.