If you are weighing a Japanese language school in the Tokyo–Kyoto corridor, ARC is one of the names that keeps surfacing — partly because it has been teaching since 1986, and partly because its own materials are unusually specific about fees, campuses and student numbers. This guide pulls those facts straight off the school’s official pages and lays out what an international applicant can actually expect, without inflating anything that is not published.
What ARC is and where it teaches
ARC Japanese Language School (ARC日本语学校) is a private Japanese language school founded in 1986. It describes its educational aim as helping students build real conversational ability — understanding and expressing ideas between cultures — rather than cramming for a single certificate. The school name derives from three ideas it treats as founding values: Arch and Articulation, Realization, and Contribution.
Under the school’s own brochure, the group runs three campuses for study-abroad students: the Tokyo campus with a stated capacity of 640 students, the Shinjuku campus with 240, and the Kyoto campus with 400. Its materials note that students come from more than thirty countries, which gives the classes a deliberately international character. When you read a tuition figure or an intake term, it is worth checking which campus it refers to — Tokyo and Kyoto are the two most often cited in the fee schedules below.
Which courses an international student can choose
ARC’s published course list separates study-abroad programmes from short courses that do not require a student visa.
The core option for a study-abroad visa is the General Japanese Course. This is the programme whose fee tables appear across the school’s admission pages, available in four-, seven-, ten- and one-month staggered intakes that map onto one-, one-and-three-quarter-, one-and-a-half- and one-and-a-quarter-year study plans. The school states that the general course cannot exceed two years of study.
Within the general course, ARC offers special streams. The Graduate School Preparation Class is aimed at students who intend to move on to a Japanese postgraduate programme. The Business Japanese Class targets applicants who expect to enter a Japanese company after graduating. The Preparation Education Course is a longer track, offered in two-year and eighteen-month versions, with a separate fee scale from the general course. For people already living in Japan without a need for a student visa, ARC also runs short Intensive Japanese Courses of roughly three months.
The school publishes that it runs guidance events for university and vocational-school applicants, offers individual advising and interview practice, and can give strong students a direct recommendation for admission to partner institutions. It also operates a licensed, fee-free employment support office for students who hope to find work in Japan after they finish.
Entry requirements and documentation
ARC does not publish a single universal “admission score”; entry is handled through an application-and-screening procedure described in its entrance materials. The practical points an applicant is asked to prepare, based on the school’s own instructions, are:
- past academic records and a certificate of study or qualification,
- identification such as a passport,
- documentation of the finances and the financial sponsor supporting the stay,
- confirmation that the applicant has sufficient Japanese-language study background or otherwise meets the intake’s conditions.
The details and the exact checklist for a given term are published in the school’s entrance-procedure document for that year, so the reliable move is to open the edition that matches the term you are targeting. For applicants who are turned down for a visa (refusal stamped in the passport), the published refund rules describe submitting the certificate of eligibility and the passport copy to claim back part of the tuition.
Costs: two fee schedules to be careful with
The single most common confusion about ARC is that it has two published tuition schedules right now, and they apply to different intakes. This is worth reading carefully, because quoting the wrong one will mislead a budget.
The first schedule applies to students entering up to the January 2026 term and was set to begin for April 2024 entrants. Under this schedule the General Japanese Course figures are:
- one year: ¥30,000 selection fee + ¥70,000 admission fee + ¥768,000 first-year tuition = ¥868,000 total
- one year three months (January intake): ¥30,000 + ¥70,000 + ¥768,000 + ¥192,000 = ¥1,060,000
- one year six months (October intake): ¥30,000 + ¥70,000 + ¥768,000 + ¥384,000 = ¥1,252,000
- one year nine months (July intake): ¥30,000 + ¥70,000 + ¥768,000 + ¥576,000 = ¥1,444,000
- two years (April intake): ¥30,000 + ¥70,000 + ¥768,000 + ¥768,000 = ¥1,636,000
The second schedule takes effect from the April 2026 term. Because of rising operating costs, ARC raised the first-year tuition for the Tokyo and Kyoto campuses. Under the new schedule the General Japanese Course one-year total becomes ¥916,000 (first-year tuition ¥816,000) and the two-year total becomes ¥1,732,000. Students who entered in 2025 up to the January 2026 term keep the old fees until they graduate, per the school’s notice.
Do not mix the two columns. If you are applying for a 2026–2027 start, budget on the post-April-2026 numbers; the older table is only relevant to earlier intakes.
The Preparation Education Course uses its own scale: the two-year track totals ¥1,692,000 and the eighteen-month track ¥1,294,000 under the pre-adjustment table. The three-month Intensive Course requires no admission fee beyond ¥10,000; the pre-adjustment figure is ¥192,000 tuition and ¥202,000 in total.
ARC states that general and preparation courses cannot exceed two years, and that textbooks are bought separately based on the student’s assigned class after a placement test.
Refund rules and payment
The refund policy applies differently depending on whether a student visa is involved.
For students who need a study-abroad visa (all the general, graduate-prep, business and preparation courses), the school states that the selection fee and admission fee are not refundable. If you cancel before the opening ceremony, you receive the tuition back after returning the certificate of eligibility and, if already in Japan, confirming departure. A visa refusal lets you claim back by submitting the certificate of eligibility and the refusal-stamped passport copy. After the opening ceremony, the term’s tuition is not refunded for any reason. For mid-course withdrawal, a refund of unstudied future terms is possible if you submit a proper request with the sponsor’s consent and the principal’s approval, but a 20 percent cancellation charge is deducted, and the refund is processed only after departure or a domestic status change, roughly one month after the paperwork.
For short courses that do not require a visa, cancelling before the start follows a sliding scale — free more than 31 days before the opening day, then 10, 20, 50 and 100 percent of the tuition forgone as the opening day approaches.
Tuition is paid via Flywire (an international education payment service, usable by card or bank) or by direct bank transfer to the school’s account at MUFG Bank. Any bank transfer fees are the payer’s responsibility.
How to verify an ARC application independently
Since ARC Japanese Language School’s own pages carry the quantities above — capacities, tuition totals, refund percentages, course lengths — the strongest step you can take is to open the ARC fee table for the term you want and confirm the figures yourself. The school publishes separate pages for the pre-2026 and post-2026 schedules precisely because keeping them apart prevents mis-budgeting.
Contacting ARC’s international admissions before applying is a normal, neutral step and costs nothing. Getting answers from the school directly, rather than from a summary posted anywhere else, is the cleanest way to confirm an intake date, a document requirement, or whether a special class fits your goal. Decisions about which term and campus suit your finances and your language goals are yours to make, and the school has published enough detail to make them on the official numbers.