This actually doesn't seem that bad for a hobby (I'd be using this almost as a fee to help me learn more about networking).

Does APNIC give out ASes for hobbyist and experimental use?

You "just" need to be in their reigon, and have justification. Usual justification is that you have two upstream networks and they'll announce your prefixes (generally with BGP). That's going to cost some more money, but there's specialist VPSes for this these days.

There’s no hobbyist program but neither is it corporate/for-profit only, from what I see.

There are few people(mostly network engineers or researchers by trade and/or business owners themselves) who are assigned ASN to their homelab gears from JPNIC. Knowing the right doors to knock etc.

Good to know. Thanks