Exploring the role of large language models during the culture shock phase
A study of international students in Japan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/2q8f1w40Keywords:
Large Language Models, Cultural Shock Phase, Cultural Adaptation, International Student, Japan Life SupportAbstract
International students face cultural challenges during culture shock, leading to distress and social isolation. University support lacks personalization, leaving students to rely on informal tools such as translation apps and social media that perform poorly in complex situations. Large Language Models offer multilingual support, yet their role in international students’ cultural adaptation remains underexplored. This study examines how LLMs support culture-related everyday tasks in Japan, where implicit institutional norms intensify difficulties. We conducted a two-phase study: a pre-survey (N = 103) identified barriers and informed four scenarios (hair appointments, clinic visits, bank account opening, and garbage classification), followed by a user study (N = 40) comparing GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, and Google Translate. Results show that breakdowns stemmed less from vocabulary than from uncertainty about institutional expectations and appropriate action. Participants used LLMs not only for translation but also for reassurance and sensemaking.
References
Adilazuarda, M. F., Mukherjee, S., Lavania, P., Singh, S. S., Aji, A. F., O’Neill, J., Modi, A., & Choudhury, M. (2024, November). Towards measuring and modeling "culture" in LLMs: A survey. In Y. Al-Onaizan, M. Bansal, & Y.-N. Chen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing (pp. 15763–15784). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-main.882 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-main.882
Afroogh, S., Akbari, A., Malone, E., Kargar, M., & Alambeigi, H. (2024). Trust in AI: Progress, challenges, and future directions. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, 1568. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04044-8 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04044-8
Al Juboori, R., Barker, D., & Kim, Y. J. (2025). Predictors of academic adjustment among international students in rural southern USA. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 22(2), 253. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22020253 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22020253
Anthropic. (2026). Model deprecations [Accessed: 2026-04-14]. https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations
Asian Students Cultural Association (ABK) & Benesse Corporation. (n.d.). Japan study support (JPSS) [Accessed: 2025-06-08]. https://www.jpss.jp/en/
Bekhet, A. K., & Zauszniewski, J. A. (2012). Methodological triangulation: An approach to understanding data. Nurse Researcher, 20(2), 40–43. https://doi.org/10.7748/nr2012.11.20.2.40.c9442 DOI: https://doi.org/10.7748/nr2012.11.20.2.40.c9442
Bradley, L., & Al-Sabbagh, K. W. (2022). Mobile language learning designs and contexts for newly arrived migrants. Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 179–189. https://doi.org/10.29140/ajal.v5n3.53si5 DOI: https://doi.org/10.29140/ajal.v5n3.53si5
Colace, F., De Santo, M., Lombardi, M., Pascale, F., Pietrosanto, A., & Lemma, S. (2018). Chatbot for e-learning: A case of study. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, 7(5), 528–533. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijmerr.7.5.528-533 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18178/ijmerr.7.5.528-533
Darmu'in, D., Nasikhin, Darnoto, Sofanudin, A., Maarif, M. A., & Haryanto, J. T. (2025). Perceived barriers to ChatGPT integration in Islamic studies education: Insights from Malaysian international students in Indonesia. Journal of International Students, 15(11), 141-164. https://doi.org/10.32674/h99a4p06 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32674/h99a4p06
Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 62(1), 107–115. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04569.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04569.x
Forbush, E., & Foucault-Welles, B. (2016). Social media use and adaptation among chinese students beginning to study in the United States. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 50, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2015.10.007 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2015.10.007
Ge, X., Xu, C., Misaki, D., Markus, H. R., & Tsai, J. L. (2024). How culture shapes what people want from AI. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’24, Article 95, pp. 1–15). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642660 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642660
Gkinko, L., & Elbanna, A. (2023). Designing trust: The formation of employees’ trust in conversational ai in the digital workplace. Journal of Business Research, 158, 113707. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113707 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113707
Goddard, W., & Melville, S. (2004). Research methodology: An introduction (2nd). Juta and Company Ltd.
Google. (2024). Updated gemini models: Reduced 1.5 pro pricing, increased rate limits, and more [Accessed: 2026-04-14]. https://developers.googleblog.com/en/updated-gemini-models-reduced-15-pro-pricing-increased-rate-limits-and-more/
Google. (2026). Gemini api: Models [Accessed: 2026-04-14]. https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models
GulRaihan, M., & Sandaran, S. (2018). Sociocultural adaptation challenges of international students at a higher learning institution in malaysia. LSP International Journal, 4(2), 85-101. https://doi.org/10.11113/lspi.v4n2.58 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11113/lspi.v4n2.58
Japan Student Services Organization. (2024). Result of International Student Survey in Japan, 2023 [Accessed: 2025-06-08]. https://www.studyinjapan.go.jp/en/statistics/enrollment/data/2405241100.html
Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO). (2025). Result of International Student Survey in Japan, 2024 [Accessed: 2025-08-12]. https://www.studyinjapan.go.jp/en/_mt/2025/04/data2024z_e.pdf
Jayasinghe, R. P. C. K., & Rathnayake, R. B. P. M. (2022). The Adaptability of Postgraduate Students to a Foreign Environment with Particular Reference to the Japanese Cultural Context. Sri Lankan Journal of Management, 27(2), 133–157. https://doi.org/10.33939/SLJM.27.02.05.2022
Kamalov, F., Santandreu Calonge, D., & Gurrib, I. (2023). New era of artificial intelligence in education: Towards a sustainable multifaceted revolution. Sustainability, 15(16), 12451. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151612451 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su151612451
Kuo, B. C., & Roysircar, G. (2006). An exploratory study of cross-cultural adaptation of adolescent taiwanese unaccompanied sojourners in canada. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 30(2), 159–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.07.007 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.07.007
Lee, J. S. (2017). Challenges of international students in a japanese university: Ethnographic perspectives. Journal of International Students, 7(1), 73–93. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v7i1.246 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v7i1.246
Lee, S., Choi, D., Truong, L., Sawhney, N., & Paakki, H. (2025). Into the unknown: Leverag-ing conversational ai in supporting young migrants’ journeys towards cultural adaptation. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713091 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713091
Liebling, D. J., Lahav, M., Evans, A., Donsbach, A., Holbrook, J., Smus, B., & Boran, L. (2020). Unmet needs and opportunities for mobile translation ai. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376261 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376261
Liu, Y., Yao, Y., Ton, J.-F., Zhang, X., Guo, R., Cheng, H., Klochkov, Y., Taufiq, M. F., & Li, H. (2023). Trustworthy llms: A survey and guideline for evaluating large language models’ alignment. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.05374
Ma, S., Lei, Y., Wang, X., Zheng, C., Shi, C., Yin, M., & Ma, X. (2023). Who should i trust: Ai or myself? leveraging human and ai correctness likelihood to promote appropriate trust in AI-assisted decision-making. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Hu-man Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581058 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581058
Masgoret, A.-M. (2006). Examining the role of language attitudes and motivation on the sociocultural adjustment and the job performance of sojourners in spain. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 30(3), 311–331. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.08.004 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.08.004
Masuda, A., Suzumura, K., Beauchamp, K., Howells, G., & Clay, C. (2005). United states and japanese college students’ attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. International Journal of Psychology, 40(5), 303–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590444000339 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590444000339
Mekni, M. (2021). An artificial intelligence based virtual assistant using conversational agents. Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 14, 455–473. https://doi.org/10.4236/jsea.2021.149027 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4236/jsea.2021.149027
Merikko, J., & Silvola, A. (2024). An ai agent facilitating student help-seeking: Producing data on student support needs (M. Hlosta, I. Moser, & B. Flanagan, et al., Eds.), Joint proceedings of lak 2024 workshops, co-located with 14th international conference on learning analytics and knowledge (lak 2024) (pp. 185–194, Vol. 3667). CEUR-WS.org. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3667/
Mojaverian, T., Hashimoto, T., & Kim, H. (2013). Cultural differences in professional help seeking: A comparison of japan and the u.s. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 615. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00615 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00615
Murphy-Shigematsu, S. (2002). Psychological barriers for international students in japan. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 24(1), 19–30. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015076202649 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015076202649
Nikkei. (2023). Japan aims to be top study abroad destination in Asia again [Accessed: 2025-06-08]. https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA165GW0W3A310C2000000/
Nippoda, Y. (2012). Japanese students’ experience of adaptation and acculturation of the united kingdom. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 8. https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1071 DOI: https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1071
Oberg, K. (1960). Cultural shock: Adjustment to new cultural environments. Practical Anthropology, os-7(4), 177–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/009182966000700405 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/009182966000700405
OpenAI. (2024). Gpt-4o model [Accessed: 2026-04-14]. https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-4o
Pang, H. (2020). Is active social media involvement associated with cross-culture adaption and academic integration among boundary-crossing students? International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 79, 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2020.08.005 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2020.08.005
Park, H., & Ahn, D. (2024). The promise and peril of chatgpt in higher education: Oppor-tunities, challenges, and design implications. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642785 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642785
Pham, A. T., Nguyen, Y. N. N., Tran, L. T., Huynh, K. D., Le, N. T. K., & Huynh, P. T. (2022). University students’ perceptions on the use of google translate: Problems and solutions. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 17(4), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v17i04.28179 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v17i04.28179
Przyłęcki, P. (2018). International students at the medical university of Łódź: Adaptation challenges and culture shock experienced in a foreign country. Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 7(2), 209–232. https://doi.org/10.17467/ceemr.2018.13
Quttainah, M., Mishra, V., Madakam, S., Lurie, Y., & Mark, S. (2024). Cost, usability, credibility, fairness, accountability, transparency, and explainability framework for safe and effective large language models in medical education: Narrative review and qualitative study. JMIR AI, 3, e51834. https://doi.org/10.2196/51834 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2196/51834
Saha, B., & Saha, U. (2024). Enhancing international graduate student experience through ai-driven support systems: A llm and rag-based approach. 2024 International Con-ference on Data Science and Its Applications (ICoDSA), 300–304. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICoDSA62899.2024.10651944 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICoDSA62899.2024.10651944
Searle, W., & Ward, C. (1990). The prediction of psychological and sociocultural adjust-ment during cross-cultural transitions. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 14(4), 449–464. https://doi.org/10.1016/0147-1767(90)90030-Z DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0147-1767(90)90030-Z
Singh, P., Patidar, M., & Vig, L. (2024, November). Translating across cultures: LLMs for intralingual cultural adaptation. In L. Barak & M. Alikhani (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th conference on computational natural language learning (pp. 400–418). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.conll-1.30 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.conll-1.30
Study in Japan. (n.d.). Support program for international students [Accessed: 2025-06-08]. https://www.studyinjapan.go.jp/en/about/support-program.html
Sumer, S. (2009). International students’ psychological and sociocultural adaptation in the united states [ERIC ED515598].
Sydoruk, T. (2024). How ai can reduce unemployment rate among vulnerable population of new immigrants: Assimilation issues resolved with ai. Economics & Education, 9(2), 20–25. https://doi.org/10.30525/2500-946X/2024-2-3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.30525/2500-946X/2024-2-3
Tran, H. N., Inosaki, A., & Jin, C.-H. (2022). On campus support and satisfaction of international students: A review of japanese literature. The IAFOR Conference on Ed-ucational Research & Innovation 2022 Official Conference Proceedings, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-1202.2022.1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-1202.2022.1
University of Tsukuba. (2024a). Tutor system for international students [Accessed: 2025-07-22]. https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/campuslife/support-international/tutor/
University of Tsukuba. (2024b). University of tsukuba factbook 2024 [Accessed: 2025-08-19]. https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/about/factbook/factbook-full-ver-r6.pdf
Wang, J., Hu, H., Wang, Z., Yan, S., Sheng, Y., & He, D. (2024). Evaluating large language models on academic literature understanding and review: An empirical study among early-stage scholars. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641917 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641917
Ward, C., Bochner, S., & Furnham, A. (2001). The psychology of culture shock (2nd). Rout-ledge.
Ward, C., & Kennedy, A. (1999). The measurement of sociocultural adaptation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 23(4), 659–677. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0147-1767(99)00014-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0147-1767(99)00014-0
Ward, C., Okura, Y., Kennedy, A., & Kojima, T. (1998). The u-curve on trial: A longitudinal study of psychological and sociocultural adjustment during cross-cultural transition. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 22(3), 277–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0147-1767(98)00008-X DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0147-1767(98)00008-X
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, CA.
Wu, Q., & Ishii, H. (2025). Decision strategies and influencing factors of international stu-dents’ university entrance in japan. Journal of International Students, 15(10), 61–84. https://doi.org/10.32674/myc3w256 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32674/myc3w256
Xia, J. (2009). Analysis of impact of culture shock on individual psychology. International Journal of Psychological Studies, 1(2), 97–101. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v1n2p97 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v1n2p97
Xin, Y., Shusheng, D., Weina, H., & Yan, D. (2025). How does digital connection shape cultural adaptation? the impact of social media use on cross-cultural adaptation of international students in China. Journal of International Students, 15(9), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.32674/0wkqv704 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32674/0wkqv704
Yeh, C., Inose, M., Kobori, A., & Chang, T. (2001). Self and coping among college students in japan. Journal of College Student Development, 42, 242–256.
Yonezawa, A. (2020). Challenges of the japanese higher education amidst population decline and globalization. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2019.1690085 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2019.1690085
Zhou, S., & Yin, J. (2024). International students’ social media use: An integrative review of research over a decade. Journal of Studies in International Education, 29(1), 42–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153241275037 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153241275037
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 ChunPi Hsieh, Yoichi Ochiai, Ichiro Matsuda, Tatsuki Fushimi, Jingjing Li
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
