Every agent in Dhaka selling Japan mentions the same number: twenty-eight hours a week. Almost none of them mention what changed in 2026 — that from the October 2026 intake, every Japanese institution must check each student's part-time hours four times a year, name every employer, record the daily hours, and report to immigration any employer pushing a student past the cap. The rule did not change. The enforcement did.
A student in Japan may not work at all until they hold the Permission to Engage in Activity Other Than That Permitted — it is free, and you can get it at the airport on arrival if your period of stay exceeds three months. With it you may work 28 hours a week across all jobs combined, or up to 8 hours a day during a vacation period your school's own rules define. The government's measured average earning is ¥81,000 a month, not the ¥200,000–300,000 brokers quote — Japan's own study-abroad portal calls that claim false.
Can a student in Japan work without permission?
No, and this is stricter than most Bangladeshi students realise. Article 19(1) of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act is a flat prohibition: a person on a Student status may not engage in income-generating or remunerated activity outside that status. Article 19(2) creates the single exception — a permission you must apply for.
The official English name, printed on the bilingual form, is the "Application for Permission to Engage in Activity Other Than That Permitted under the Status of Residence Previously Granted". In Japanese it is 資格外活動許可. It costs nothing. The standard processing period is two weeks to two months at a Regional Immigration Services Bureau — but you can skip that queue entirely.
Japan's official study-abroad portal states that students "whose period of stay exceeds three months may apply for permission at the airport or other port of entry when entering Japan for the first time, at the time landing permission is granted." The residence card is issued on landing at ten airports: New Chitose, Sendai, Narita, Haneda, Chubu, Kansai, Kobe, Hiroshima, Fukuoka and Naha. Ask for the 資格外活動許可 at the same counter as the residence card, and the permission is printed on the back of the card. Miss that moment and you wait two weeks to two months at a bureau before you can legally earn a yen.
One useful exception: since July 2010, paid teaching or research assistant work under contract with your own university does not need the permission at all.
Is the 28 hours per job or per person?
Per person. The operative text is Article 19(5)(i) of the Enforcement Regulation, which sets a limit of "twenty-eight hours per week" on the student's remunerated activity — not on any one employment relationship. There is no government sentence that uses the word "combined", so we are reading the regulation rather than quoting a slogan. But the reading is not in doubt, because of what schools are now required to collect (see below): every workplace, and the daily hours. That obligation only makes sense if hours aggregate.
The vacation rule is narrower than people assume. Eight hours a day applies only during a long vacation period stipulated in the school's own rules (学則) — summer break, for example. Not weekends. Not national holidays. And the whole permission is valid only while you are enrolled: immigration's own FAQ states that a graduate who is no longer enrolled anywhere may not work part-time even if their period of stay has not expired.
What changed for the 2027 intake?
Two things, both flowing from a Cabinet decision of 23 January 2026 aimed at "further tightening the operation of the Student status". Neither touches the 28-hour figure. Both change what happens around it.
Under the Immigration Services Agency notice, institutions hosting international students must, once every three months, confirm from each enrolled student: whether they hold the work permission; the name of every workplace where they work, all of them if there is more than one; the specific content of the work; and their daily working hours. Breaches must be corrected immediately and re-verified, and records retained. If a student reports that "an employer is forcing them to work more than 28 hours a week", or does not improve after guidance, the institution must report it to the nearest immigration office. This is the fact that changes the practical picture, and almost nobody selling Japan in Dhaka is telling students about it.
The second change is at the front door. From the October 2026 intake, 150 hours of Japanese study history no longer suffices as proof of A1-level ability for a language-school applicant: a test certificate or a documented interview by the receiving institution is now mandatory. The same applies to change-of-status and extension applications filed from 1 July 2026.
The Immigration Services Agency designates 慎重審査対象国 (careful-examination countries) by exclusion: it publishes a list of exempt countries and everyone else is in the category. The Asian exemptions are Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Türkiye, Brunei, Malaysia, the Maldives and Mongolia. Bangladesh is not on it. That matters directly under the new rule: applicants from listed countries who submit an overseas higher-education graduation certificate are exempt from proving Japanese ability. A Bangladeshi applicant gets no such exemption and must produce a test certificate or pass a documented interview.
What work is a student never allowed to do?
The regulation excludes work performed at the premises of an adult-entertainment business (風俗営業), and engagement in the related categories the Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business defines. The official English is blunt: part-time work must be "not in adult entertainment businesses. Note: Prohibited by law."
The nuance that catches students out is the phrase "at the premises". The ban is not limited to the entertainment role — kitchen work, cleaning or washing dishes inside such a business is equally prohibited. A student who takes a dishwashing shift at a hostess club because it "isn't that kind of job" is working illegally.
Japan's official portal also states the purpose condition plainly: the income "is meant to supplement your academic cost and necessary expenses and not for saving or for remittance overseas."
What actually happens if you go over?
Four different consequences, of very different severity, and it is worth knowing which one is common.
- Criminal penalty, ordinary case (Article 73): up to 1 year's imprisonment and/or a fine of up to ¥2,000,000
- Criminal penalty, serious case (Article 70(1)(iv)): where a person is "clearly recognised as exclusively engaging" in unauthorised work — up to 3 years and/or ¥3,000,000
- Deportation: the same "exclusively engaging" case is a listed ground for deportation
- Status revocation: where the Student activity has not been performed for 3 consecutive months or more without justifiable reason; the departure period then set is not more than 30 days
- Non-renewal — the one that actually happens: the Agency's own leaflet warns that breaching the work permission may mean your period of stay is simply not extended
Japan's official portal is unusually direct about this: "Every year, we see international students who are forced to leave Japan as they cannot extend their period of authorized stay … due to their low school-attendance rates because they work part-time and neglect their studies." Employers are liable too — the offence of promoting illegal work currently carries up to 3 years and/or ¥3,000,000, and ignorance is not a defence unless the employer was without negligence.
How much can a student realistically earn?
Start with the legal ceiling, then the measured reality. Japan revised its minimum wages on 3 September 2026, taking effect from 1 October 2026 onwards — a ¥56 rise in the national weighted average, the second largest since the guideline system began in 1978.
| Region | Per hour | 28 hrs × 4 weeks | In taka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo | ¥1,280 | ¥143,360 | ৳111,800 |
| Osaka | ¥1,231 | ¥137,872 | ৳107,500 |
| National average | ¥1,177 | ¥131,824 | ৳102,800 |
| Fukuoka | ¥1,114 | ¥124,768 | ৳97,300 |
| Lowest (Miyazaki) | ¥1,085 | ¥121,520 | ৳94,800 |
| Actual average | ¥1,300 | ¥81,000 | ৳63,200 |
That last row is the one to read twice. The first five rows are our arithmetic on verified minimum wages, and they assume a student gets 28 hours every single week of the year. The final row is not arithmetic at all — it is what Japan's own survey of privately financed international students actually measured: about ¥81,000 a month, at an average wage of ¥1,300 an hour, with 65% of students working at all and only 3.6% earning more than ¥1,600 an hour. That is roughly 56% of the full-cap Tokyo figure.
Japan's official portal names and rejects two broker claims outright: that ¥3,000 an hour is achievable, and that ¥200,000–300,000 a month lets a student cover fees and send money home. Both are labelled false on a government page. When someone in Dhaka quotes you those numbers, you now know where the government stands.
Do working students pay tax and insurance?
Yes to both, and the thresholds interact with the cap in a way worth planning around.
Income tax. Japan's 2025 reform raised the minimum salary-income deduction to ¥650,000 and the basic deduction for lower incomes to ¥950,000 — so roughly ¥1,600,000 of salary income before income tax is due. A Tokyo student working the full 28 hours every week of the year would gross about ¥1,863,680 and cross that line. A student at the ¥81,000 average would not come close. Students with more than one job must also handle the payment themselves at the tax office.
Health insurance. Compulsory. Foreign residents staying three months or more must join the National Health Insurance programme; it pays 70% and you pay 30%. Premiums are calculated on the previous year's income, part-time work included, and low-income reductions exist only if the income is declared.
Pension. Everyone in Japan is enrolled from age 20, foreign residents included — but students can apply for the Student Payment Special Provision, which defers the premium. The income test looks at the student's own income only, family income is irrelevant, and the line sits at ¥1,280,000 plus allowances. Deferred periods can be paid back within ten years. Note what that means: working the cap year-round in Tokyo would both create an income-tax liability and push you past the pension deferral test.
What does a Bangladeshi applicant do differently?
Does part-time work help you stay after graduation?
Not directly — the hours themselves count for nothing. Changing to a work status turns on your academic record: a degree in a field related to the job, or a 専門士 title with a demonstrable link between the major and the role.
What does exist is a job-hunting window. Graduates of a university or a qualifying vocational course, with a recommendation letter from their institution, may change to Designated Activities status for 6 months, renewable once — up to one year in Japan to look for work. A second year is possible for a graduate accepted onto a qualifying local-government employment-support programme. And in all of those cases 28-hour part-time work continues with permission, provided the school's recommendation letter mentions it explicitly.
Japan is the destination where the gap between the brochure and the arithmetic is widest. Families plan a budget on ¥200,000 a month and arrive to ¥81,000, and the shortfall lands on attendance, which is the one thing that decides whether the visa gets extended. We would rather sit with a family and build the budget on the government's own measured figure, even when that makes the conversation harder, than help them appeal a refused extension eighteen months later.
What we could not verify, stated plainly. No government page states a start day for the 28-hour week, so the only safe reading is that no rolling seven-day window may exceed 28 hours — that is our interpretation, not a quoted rule. Nor does any page use the word "combined" for multiple jobs; the aggregation is our inference from the regulation's wording plus the new reporting duty, and we label it as such. The increase of the employer offence to 5 years and ¥5,000,000 is confirmed in the 2024 amendment outline but the in-force text still showed 3 years and ¥3,000,000 on 28 September 2026, so we quote the current figures; the new ones are expected with the 1 April 2027 commencement of that Act. The ¥81,000 and ¥1,300 figures come from the 2023 JASSO lifestyle survey and are three years old. The Immigration Services Agency no longer maintains an English website — isa.go.jp/en redirects to Japanese and the old English URLs 404 — so English wording here comes from the bilingual official forms and Japan's MEXT/JASSO study-abroad portal. All taka conversions are our arithmetic at ¥1 ≈ ৳0.78 on 29 September 2026. Minimum-wage effective dates carry the Ministry's own caveat that they may change following objection procedures. Read 28 September 2026.
Official sources: Study in Japan (MEXT/JASSO) — part-time work rules and measured earnings · Immigration Services Agency — the work permission procedure · Immigration Services Agency — 2026 tightening of the Student status
Related guides: Japan MEXT scholarship for Bangladeshi students · Japan student visa from Bangladesh
Building a Japan budget? Build it on ¥81,000, not on a brochure.
The 28-hour cap is real, the enforcement got sharper this year, and the measured average earning is a little over half what most people are told. Bring us your offer letter and your family's actual numbers, and we will tell you honestly whether the plan holds — before anyone pays a deposit.
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