Are you feeling 100%? We think it can be difficult to stay healthy in Japan. In what ways is your lifestyle healthy or unhealthy?
Hmmn, is anyone anywhere ever feeling 100%?
I don’t think it’s very difficult to stay healthy in Japan, although I do worry about what might happen should I get really sick.
With respect to a healthy lifestyle, I’m certainly living more healthily here in Japan than I did in the States. Of course, I eat almost exclusively Japanese food, which may not be the same with other foreigners (certainly among foreign co-workers I notice a lot of McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken runs). Japanese have the longest average life-span in the world and certainly their diet contributes greatly to this longevity. I’m a vegetarian who eats fish (therefore not really a vegetarian but nevermind) and frankly I’ve never eaten as well or as healthily as I’m now eating in Japan.
While a relatively new thing, sports gyms are growing in popularity and unless you live in the sticks, they’re very accessible and reasonably priced. Biking can be a necessity, especially if you live in the suburbs, and this helps too. Hiking opportunities are a plenty. Frankly, if foreigners are complaining that it’s difficult to live healthy in Japan, they aren’t trying hard enough, or they need to get with the program and start loving Japanese food!
That said, there are many unhealthy aspects of living in Japan. For starters, the daily salaryman regimen of working long hours, getting sloshed after work, and getting the majority of their sleep on the commuter train is certainly unhealthy. Living in Tokyo, while not as dirty or polluted as some metropolises, can’t be very healthy in the long run. I think it’s easier to catch colds here. In the relentlessly hot and humid summers, many Japanese seem able to forgo air-conditioning, but not I and I doubt many other foreigners. So sleeping with the air-con on is a necessity, though I can’t imagine that’s very good for the body and over the long-term I worry about the consequences.
Fortunately I haven’t had to seek health care, and so I can’t directly comment on that aspect, but via anecdotal information I do worry about the standard of health care in this country should I (knock on wood) require it.
My only experience with the Japanese health care system was actually a pretty good one. I went to Japan with my girlfriend and towards the end of our stay she got pretty ill (in quite a bit of pain, if I recall). It really was a simple matter of dropping in for care at our local clinic (we knew already knew where it was, and our landlord confirmed on our way out). Anyway, got there and it was somewhat busy. Filled out some paperwork and saw a doctor within about an hour. He asked some basic questions, prescribed some medicine that we picked up at the local pharmacy and we headed home. Anyway, we of course had no idea what the medicine actually was – the doctor was kind enough to write down the kanji for her ailment, which we looked up at home (though I forget now what it was). Anyway, she took the medicine and it helped. All in all, nothing that different from what I would have expected from visiting a US hospital. Well, the doctor did have a bit of a grin when he asked if she was on medication, and she responded birth control pills (from the States). This was a few months after they were finally approved for use in Japan.
Oh, we both were on the national health insurance system, and we just showed her card as part of filling out the paperwork. I recall the charges at the end of the day were unbelievably low.
So at least for this relatively low level medical incident it was pretty routine. Still, I can imagine horror stories especially with more serious incidents.
Hope we never have to find out, eh?
-Jason
japan is very healthy in comparison to most of america. if you are eating a traditional diet and avoid all the tempura/tonkatsu/fried food – and especially if you are eating brown or partly brown rice – then nutrition is superb. and all the walking and/or bike riding that’s required in just getting around the city sure beats sitting on your ass in traffice in a car. add to that carrying your bag and/or purchases around, its a not a bad daily workout. i also have a dog, so have to walk her twice a day — on average i pedestrian around between 6-12 kilometers a day.
but that medical system, ummm, i’ve got some serious reservations. i’ve had many friends, and a wife who’ve had to seek medical assistance and the system here is quite different. doctors not listening and short (3 minutes) appointments, long hospital stays, no labels on medication, incomplete dosages of anti-biotics, strange diagnosis or very different from american doctor’s diagnosis, chinese medicinal cures, some odd illnesses i’ve never encountered, and the general populations lack of, or just different biology knowledge (colds come from being cold, etc.) – its hard to know how much of all that is just my inability to deal with a different culture or a system that is indeed strange. what i do know is that most of my friends were only healed or cured upon returning to the u.s. and american doctors.
The Japanese health system is a nightmare. As mentioned above mislabeled or unlabeled medication, bizarre diagnosis with equally bizarre medical treatment, generally second rate medication, and wretched medical training.
According to my step-mom, who is an ER doctor, Japanese doctors have a lot of knowledge but do not know how to apply that knowledge or be flexible while in the operating room. What’s even scarier, is the fact that almost everyone passes medical school. Think about it.
Kenji, the knuckle head who keeps removing the wrong internal organs, will be operating on you today. We hope you have your papers in order and have said your farewells.
The most frightening experience for me was having the doctors, here in Japan, tell me they needed to do exploratory surgery on my daughter, who was 4 or so at the time. Odds are it would have killed her. So, to avoid an unnecessary death in the family, I called my step-mom in L.A.. She asked me a few questions and then told me there was nothing to worry about. She did this over the phone! Her first question was, “What color is the blood?” and then, “Is she, my daughter, pooping rabbit pellets?”
I said, “No.”
She says, “It’s not cancer.”
Amazing.
So, a few days before she was to be sliced open, the little polyp popped out on the way back from the hospital. My wife pulls into the nearest hospital and lucks out with one of the old school doctors. Basically, he asked the same two questions my step-mom did and came to the same conclusion.
Amazing.
For my daughter’s sake, he got some string, tied off the end of the polyp, hacked it off, and then told us to check back in a week or two.
Anyway, the medical system here sucks and I pray to God I never get really ill.
NOTE: This post was NOT proofread. Hope you enjoyed it.