[Nyororin]

I`ll be totally straight - you`re most likely not going to be able to pull this off in the manner you`re looking to.

You`ll have to enter the school as a regular student... Which means you will not get the sponsorship that a program provides. Schools pretty much never deal directly with exchange students. They deal with a company that sponsors and arranges the student. The schools themselves almost never know how to do this. The few that do will not be comfortable with it unless you`re coming from their sister schools.

Either way, you`ll still have to pay full tuition, uniform, supply costs - in addition to housing costs. If you don`t have a program of some sort backing you up, you`ll still need to have a huge amount of cash at hand "just in case".

My suggestion - go to a Japanese language school for a year. I doubt there are any that will arrange the full deal for you in Ogaki, but Gifu is a possibility... And if all else fails Nagoya has a number of schools.

Don`t fall for the GAP appeal. You won`t be a student. You`ll be this weird thing in limbo. English teachers will drag you to their classes as a mini-ALT, and you may be allowed to sit in on one or two classes and MAYBE be allowed to be an honorary club member - but more than half of the time you`ll be twiddling your thumbs in the teachers` lounge.