Sickness

What's the most anxious thing in traveling overseas is probably sickness. The risk of overseas sickness can be considered not only in the case of non-Japanese coming to Japan but also, of course, traveling anywhere out of countries. Besides sickly constitutions, this comes from mostly the differences in food, climate or culture between native countries and overseas. Here are mainly two troubles when you get sick overseas, language and money.

Sickness is no doubt a serious problem any time. If the treatment is wrong, it could endanger your life. In order to minimize the risk, it's tremendously important to tell doctors about the conditions of diseases as they are. Otherwise the doctors won't be able to take an appropriate medical examination. Even when you are telling the doctors in your countries in your mother language, you may feel it difficult to do so. What will happen if that's the case when you make a trip to a strange land and you have difficulties to make yourselves understood because of language barriers. Although intelligent doctors speak some foreign languages, this is more serious than you think. You should give up the idea that doctors are all qualified in any other fields than doctor's job beyond nationalities. You may also think that any doctors can see patients with abundant experiences and high-tech medical instruments since human bodies are the same. There are, however, many cases where telling its nuances about your sickness will become important to medical treatments.

Money is the second most serious problem. Even though you can find a good doctor and you get better, what concerns you next is the expensive bills. Besides you've already bought a travel insurance policy before coming to Japan, or you've joined the national health insurance (you pay 30 % of the medical costs) as registered foreign residents, you don't have to worry about money so much. Furthermore, if you are proper workers, your companies obligatorily take out Worker's Accidental Compensation Insurance. So when you get sick due to your job, medical bills are compensated by the insurance. As for the sickness not arising out of your job as well, by paying just 20% of the medical costs, health insurance qualified for workers will provide you with the rest of compensation for curing your sick. Nevertheless, there are many foreigners who don't take medical treatment because they have no insurance. Even short-staying travelers have to take measures for a rainy day.

Here is a generous law in Japan saving poor travelers. It's the Sick/Dead Travelers Treatment Law. This law aims at providing medical services for the travelers who get seriously sick and burial services for the ones who die during the trips. The traveler, simply saying, is the one who becomes unable to walk because of illness and needs to be hospitalized in the course of traveling in Japan. Even though travelers are in the very situation, who files the applications to municipalities is a hospital not the traveler who can't do that because of badly sickness. Since there are the occasions where the applications are not acceptable, you still have to take preventive measures by yourselves.

In any case there are non-government organizations (NGO) that help foreigners to provide medical consultation services by phone in foreign languages on the house. Introduce one of them as below.