NEWS & GUIDES — KANSAI KOTOBA guide

Part-Time Work in Japan on a Student Visa: The 28-Hour Rule, Pay and Your First Job (2026 Guide)The 28-hour rule, the free work permission, Osaka and Kyoto pay rates, where language students actually work, and what happens if you go over — the complete 2026 guide.

Most language-school students in Japan work part-time. The pay covers groceries, transport and a social life; the shifts build the Japanese that classrooms cannot teach. But the right to work is not automatic: a student visa covers study, not employment, and paid work needs a separate permission that is free, takes minutes at the airport — and has a hard limit of 28 hours a week. Break that limit and you risk the visa itself. This guide explains the rule in plain language, how to get the permission, what the work actually pays in Osaka and Kyoto in late 2026, where students find jobs, and the mistakes that cost people their renewals. If you have not chosen a school yet, run the School Finder first — your school's location and timetable decide which jobs are realistic before you ever apply for one.

The 28-hour rule in one minute

On a Student status of residence, you may work up to 28 hours a week during term time — but only with permission to engage in activity other than that permitted under your status of residence (資格外活動許可, shikakugai katsudō kyoka). The permission is free, and new students arriving with a student visa for more than three months can receive it at the airport on their first entry. It is stamped on the back of your residence card, and it is the document every employer will ask to see before your first shift.

Three details catch almost everyone who gets into trouble. First, 28 hours is the total across all of your jobs, not per job: two jobs of 15 hours each is 30 hours, and that is a violation. Second, the week is any seven consecutive days, not Monday to Sunday — Immigration's own guidance says the total must stay within 28 hours whichever day you start counting from. Third, the limit exists because study comes first: your school reports your attendance to Immigration, and a student who works so much that classes suffer will find the problem at renewal time, not at the part-time job. Since April 2026, language schools have also been required to check their students' part-time work every three months and keep records, so the hours are no longer something only you and your employer know about.

Keep this page's numbers as planning guides, not promises: minimum wages are revised every autumn, your school sets its own vacation dates, and your employer sets your actual hourly rate above the floor. What never changes is the shape of the rule — permission first, 28 hours total, study first. Everything else in this guide hangs off those three facts.

The permission: free, and best collected at the airport

There are two kinds of permission, and almost every language student needs only the first. Comprehensive permission (包括許可) is the standard one: it does not name an employer, it covers ordinary part-time work, and it carries the 28-hour limit. Individual permission (個別許可) is for specific cases — a final-year internship that runs over 28 hours, or freelance work whose hours cannot be verified — and it names the activity and sets its own conditions. If you are reading this guide before arrival, comprehensive permission is the one to ask for.

The easiest moment to get it is your first arrival. At the immigration counter at Kansai Airport, ask for the application form for permission to engage in activity other than that permitted, fill it in and hand it over with your passport: the permission is stamped on your residence card on the spot, free of charge. If you miss that moment, apply later at the regional immigration bureau for your area — the Osaka or Kyoto office — with the same form, your residence card and passport; allow a few weeks for that route, and do not start work until the permission is in hand. Working even one shift without it is unauthorised employment under the Immigration Control Act, with penalties of up to one year in prison or a fine of up to ¥2,000,000. The form is free, the stamp is free, and the airport takes minutes — there is no reason to skip it.

One exception is worth knowing: work done under a contract with your own school or university, such as a teaching or research assistant role, does not need this permission. That matters more for university students than for language-school students, whose part-time jobs are almost always with outside employers. For everything else — the convenience store, the restaurant, the delivery app — the permission is the ticket, and employers who hire students legally will check it before your first shift. A job offer that tells you not to worry about the permission is a job to walk away from.

How the 28 hours are counted

The counting rules are where good students get caught by accident, so learn them before your first roster. The 28 hours are a rolling total: pick any seven consecutive days and add up every paid hour in that window, across every employer. A week of 20 hours at a café plus a 10-hour weekend at a hotel is 30 hours, even if each employer's own records look fine. Keep a simple weekly log — a phone note is enough — and check it before accepting an extra shift. Delivery and gig work count too, including the hours you spend waiting between orders if you are paid for them; if your hours cannot be verified, that work needs individual permission instead.

Long vacations change the ceiling but not the logic. During the long vacations set by your school's own rules — summer, winter and spring breaks — the limit becomes 8 hours a day, and the Labour Standards Act separately caps the working week at 40 hours. Short breaks between terms, Golden Week and public holidays are not long vacations: the 28-hour week still applies, however quiet the school is that week. Night work between 22:00 and 05:00 must be paid at least 25% above your normal hourly rate under the Labour Standards Act, which is why late shifts at convenience stores and izakaya pay more — and why they are popular with students who can handle the hours.

The pattern above is the shape most successful students settle into: weekday shifts short enough to protect homework, one longer weekend shift, one full rest day. It earns real money without touching the ceiling, and it leaves a margin for the week a manager begs you to cover an extra shift — the exact week unprepared students go over.

Where students actually work in Osaka and Kyoto

The job you can get depends mostly on your Japanese level, and the honest version of that ladder is below. At beginner level (around N5), the realistic jobs are kitchen work, dishwashing, convenience stores, supermarket shelf-stacking and warehouse or logistics shifts — work where instructions are short, repeated and partly visual. At lower-intermediate (N4), restaurants, cafés, fast food, retail and hotel housekeeping open up, because you can take a simple order and answer a simple question. At N3 and above, front-desk hotel work, tourist information, tutoring, translation and customer-facing roles in Namba, Umeda, Gion and Arashiyama become realistic, and the hourly rate usually rises with them.

Osaka and Kyoto hire differently. Osaka's bigger service economy — Namba and Umeda's restaurants and shops, the bay area's logistics warehouses, and the hotel belt around Osaka Station — generally offers more beginner-friendly shifts and more evening work, which suits a morning-class timetable. Kyoto hires hardest in tourism: hotels and ryokan near Kyoto Station and Gion, restaurants in Arashiyama and Higashiyama, and souvenir shops that value a student who can greet visitors in two languages. Competition from other students is fiercest in Kyoto's sightseeing districts in sakura and momiji seasons — the same weeks the pay and the hours are best. Wherever you look, the main job boards are Baitoru, Townwork and Mynavi Baito, plus your school's own job board and the Hello Work employment service centres for foreigners. Not sure which city fits your work plan? The School Finder matches schools by city, budget and start date — pick the city whose job market fits your Japanese level, then let the Finder shortlist the schools inside it.

Jobs by Japanese level (guide)

What the money looks like

At the legal floor, the maths is simple enough to plan around. Osaka's minimum wage is ¥1,231 an hour from 1 October 2026; Kyoto's is ¥1,122 until 15 November 2026 and ¥1,180 from 16 November. The table below converts those rates into monthly income at different weekly hours (a month counted as 4.33 weeks, before tax and deductions). Most students settle around 15–20 hours a week — enough to matter, small enough to protect study — and JASSO's surveys put the average international student's part-time income at about ¥81,000 a month, which lines up with roughly 15 hours a week at Osaka's minimum wage.

Two deductions surprise first-year students. Income tax is generally not charged on small part-time incomes — the commonly quoted ¥1.03 million-a-year line has moved under recent tax reforms, so check the National Tax Agency's current figure rather than planning around a number from an old blog post — but National Health Insurance premiums are calculated from the previous year's income in Japan, so a strong second year of earnings raises the premium in the third. Keep every payslip and your withholding slips: your school needs them for the quarterly work checks, Immigration may ask at renewal, and they are the proof that your hours stayed legal. To see what that income covers, compare it with the monthly budgets on our Costs page and the Osaka vs Kyoto cost comparison — the honest answer is that part-time work covers daily life, not tuition, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Monthly income at the minimum wage (guide, before tax)

What you cannot do — and what happens if you do

Some work is off limits even with permission. Any business licensed under the adult entertainment law — hostess bars, host clubs, massage parlours, pachinko parlours and similar venues — is prohibited entirely, including jobs that never touch a customer: washing dishes or cleaning in such a venue is still a violation. The rule is about the business, not the task, and it is the fastest way to lose a visa over a job that looked harmless. The same applies to any work your school has not been told about, because the quarterly checks introduced in April 2026 mean the school will ask: where you work, how many hours, and whether the permission covers it.

The consequences scale with the offence. Working without permission at all is a criminal matter under the Immigration Control Act — up to one year in prison or a fine of up to ¥2,000,000 — and can lead to deportation. Exceeding 28 hours is more common and more quietly destructive: the permission can be revoked, the record sits on your file, and the next extension of your period of stay can be refused even if your attendance is good. Employers who knowingly let students work over the limit face their own criminal liability for facilitating illegal work. And the link students miss is attendance: schools report it to Immigration, language schools now check work quarterly, and a student with falling attendance and heavy work hours is the exact profile renewals are refused for. The job is supposed to fund the study, not replace it.

✕ Red flags — walk away from any job that does any of these
✕  Asks you to work before your permission is stamped
✕  Pays cash in hand with no payslip and no contract
✕  Schedules you over 28 hours a week, or asks you not to tell your school
✕  Is in an adult-entertainment business, even for cleaning or kitchen work
✕  Pays below the prefectural minimum wage (Osaka ¥1,231, Kyoto ¥1,122–¥1,180)
✕  Asks for your residence card or passport to “keep safe” — never hand over originals

If a job already has you in one of these situations, stop and ask for help before the next shift: your school's student office deals with this every term, and the Hello Work centres for foreigners can explain your rights in English. The students who recover from a bad first job are the ones who ask early; the ones who lose their visa are the ones who hope nobody notices.

Your first job, step by step

The practical sequence is short, and the order matters almost as much as for the arrival paperwork. Get the permission at the airport on day one — it is the step students most regret skipping. In your first two weeks, settle the address registration and bank account first (see our first-14-days guide), because employers pay by bank transfer and check the address on your residence card. Then prepare a Japanese CV (rirekisho): a photo, your school, your Japanese level, your available hours — handwritten forms from a convenience store still work, and many schools run a CV workshop in the first month. Apply through Baitoru or Townwork, your school's job board, or by walking into shops near your school with a short self-introduction ready.

At the interview, expect simple questions — why this job, which days you can work, how long you will stay in Japan — and answer in the Japanese you actually have; managers hiring students expect N4, not N1, and they are judging reliability more than grammar. Before the first shift, confirm three things in writing: the hourly rate, the shift pattern, and that transport is reimbursed. Then keep the weekly log from the third section of this guide, and review it every Sunday night: if the coming week's roster pushes you past 28 hours, tell the manager now, not after the shift. A student who declines one extra shift keeps the visa; a student who accepts it and gets caught loses the reason they came to Japan.

☑ Before your first shift
☑  Permission to work stamped on your residence card
☑  Address registered and bank account open (pay lands by transfer)
☑  CV (rirekisho) ready, with photo and available hours
☑  Hourly rate, shift pattern and transport confirmed in writing
☑  School told where you work and how many hours
☑  Weekly hours log started — check it every Sunday
☑  Night-shift premium (25% after 22:00) understood, if applicable

Sources checked for this guide: the Immigration Services Agency (permission to engage in activity other than that permitted; the April 2026 quarterly-check requirement for language schools); the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's FY2026 regional minimum-wage list (Osaka ¥1,231 from 1 Oct 2026; Kyoto ¥1,180 from 16 Nov 2026, ¥1,122 before that); the Labour Standards Act (40-hour week, 25% night premium); Waseda University's part-time-work guidance for students; and JASSO surveys of international-student part-time income. Rules and rates change, so treat this guide as a map and Immigration, your school and your employer as the ground truth. If a counter or a payslip tells you something different from this page, the counter is right — and tell us, so we can update the guide. To plan the money around the work, see our Costs page and the Osaka vs Kyoto cost comparison, or run the School Finder to match a school to your budget, city and start date.

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