Tuition depends on the place of course, but you'd probably be looking at around 1,400,000 yen total for 2 years of school. This of course does not include livings fees etc. If you are thinking of Tokyo, then living costs will be high, but there are plenty of language schools outside Tokyo where you can live for cheaper. If you get a cheap enough place to live, you are looking at probably around 300,000 to 400,000 yen for a year of rent. 120,000 maybe for a year of utilities. Food is hard to say, but for the sake of argument we'll say 20,000 yen a month so 240,000 yen a year. So if you go to language school in Japan, for a total of 2 years, you are probably looking at 2.7~3.0 million yen. It of course varies depending on your lifestyle, habits, and where you live, but I doubt you could get it much cheaper than that. If you want to go out to restaurants, do touristy stuff, shopping, etc then that will make things a lot more expensive, but we will say the bare minimum you need is close to 3 million yen for 2 years.
Now, as to whether you could work part time to cover it, that depends. As said by others, you can work 28 hours a week during school, and during vacation (summer holidays) you can work up to 8 hours a day with the 28 hour restriction gone. I don't believe there is a 4 hour a day restriction for while you are in school, I have never heard of such a thing, nor would it really make any sense, as 28 hours is 28 hours regardless of how you work the hours. If you get a job at say a convenience store, then you are looking at about 90,000 to 100,000 yen a month as previously said by someone else. It should not be hard to get hours at a convenience store type job, they are always hiring. So you could probably make about 2.5~million yen in 2 years in Japan working that kind of job, depending on your wage of course. Some people also teach English while they are going to school. The pay is better, but it might be hard to find that kind of job if you are not a native English teacher, and I have never done that kind of job myself so I am not sure how likely you are to get 28 hours in a week.
All this being said, you do need to have money before you come. So you can't apply for a visa with just 500,000 yen in your account and work your way through the rest of school. You need to show you have enough money to support yourself for at least the first year. I believe they look for around 1 million to 2 million yen, depending on your length of visa, but they may be more strict on those from the developing world.
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