Doctors in Tokyo
Let me take a break from all the fun traveling stuff for a post on doctors. I’ve unfortunately had to see quite a few doctors so I thought I would pass on some of my knowledge on this topic for anybody who might need it!
As year-long exchange students, we are required to be insured under the Japanese national health insurance and this means that you only pay 30% of your medical bill so normally, your medical bill will end up to be quite cheap. There are some places that don’t accept national health care though so make sure to check first! You can go to hospitals or clinics. I would recommend going to a clinic because hospitals may charge you an extra fee if you weren’t recommended by a doctor to go there and this brings your medical bill up quite a bit.
I think the most difficult thing is finding a good English-speaking doctor. Luckily, being in Tokyo, the task is easier than if I was in a more inaka area but then again as with every country, there are good doctors and maybe not so good doctors.
At the Himawari website you can find out where there are English-speaking doctors available but I would be careful with this site because if you go to a hospital listed on this site, since hospitals have various doctors, you might end up with a doctor who doesn’t really speak English. I would definitely recommend doing some research on the internet. In particular, I really recommend looking on forums since people will tell you if they’ve had good or bad experiences with certain doctors.
I will not share any of the not so good experiences I’ve had with doctors here since I might just have been unlucky and they may be very good doctors but it might just have been a bad day (?) but I will definitely recommend the following two clinics:
For a primary care doctor I would recommend Primary Care Tokyo - the doctor is very thorough and patient. For a dermatologist I would recommend Garden Clinic Hiroo - also a very thorough and patient doctor! They both accept the Japanese national health insurance.
I hope you won’t need to see any doctors but if you do I hope this helps!
