How to read this
Two things drive the answer most: how the parent's care level changes over time, and how many paid home-help hours you layer on top of the covered services. Public long-term care insurance caps the covered amount by care level, and a separate high-cost care refund caps your monthly co-payment, so the home line is rarely the headline cost on its own. It is the private hours, the uncovered extras, and the years that add up. A facility folds round-the-clock presence into a flatter monthly fee, which is why the two paths can cross.
For the single-month breakdown of covered services and co-payments, use our monthly cost simulator. For how the system and its costs work, see the costs of elderly care in Japan guide and the long-term care insurance guide, and the comparison of home care versus facility care. If you want the numbers checked against your parent's real situation, that is exactly what our care navigation service does, and you can contact us to start. Definitions and figures are general orientation; rules vary by municipality, and our editorial policy explains how we source and update them.