Who this is for
This site explains Japan’s care, medical, and daily-life systems for three groups:
- Foreign-national seniors living in Japan
- Families supporting a relative in Japan from overseas or at a distance
- People weighing a later-life move to Japan
We do not skip the parts that are obvious to anyone raised in Japan. We start further back: what a Community Comprehensive Support Center (chiiki hokatsu shien center) is and what you can ask it, or who is allowed to file a care-level certification application. Pages that exist in both languages are kept aligned, so English and Japanese readers reach the same facts.
Writers and advisers
Japan Care Concierge is operated by Social Welfare Corporation Shinkou Fukushikai, which runs care services in Kanagawa under the Cross Heart name. Our editorial team writes the articles and guides, drawing on the practical knowledge of two named professionals:
- Yen Lin (林 燕), Special Assignment Director of the International Division at Shinkou Fukushikai. Certified Social Worker, Certified Care Worker, and Care Manager. She ran a dementia group home for about four years.
- Seiko Adachi (足立 聖子), Care Manager and Certified Welfare Facility Manager. She spent six years directing a special nursing home and four years heading a municipal community support center.
For medical and care topics that carry real weight, we check drafts against primary sources and against that hands-on experience before publishing. Full profiles and credentials are on the About page.
A reviewer is named on an individual article only once that person has signed off on it, and the name then appears at the foot of that article. No article carries a named reviewer today. We do not list a reviewer name or credential that does not exist.
Sources and research
Explanations of the system are based on primary sources:
- Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare notifications and advisory-council papers
- Official English translations of Japanese law
- Municipal guidelines and public service-desk information
Every article lists its references and the date they were checked. We do not publish a figure we cannot trace to a source, and we do not publish hearsay.
Practice varies by municipality, so we avoid writing as if one national rule applied everywhere. Care-level certification is legally supposed to take 30 days. In practice the median across insurers is 39.3 days from application to the second-stage decision, and the median share decided within 30 days is 21.4%. Source: MHLW Social Security Council long-term care insurance committee (February 2025) covering 1,559 insurers.
Pre-publish checks
Rules, figures, and proper nouns are verified against primary sources as we write. Before anything goes live, an automated check runs across the whole site. The main items:
- Title and description length, so listings are not cut off in search results
- Repeated titles and descriptions, which leave readers guessing which of two near-identical pages to open
- Structured-data validity, so machines read the same dates and sources shown on the page
- Repeated FAQ questions, which would let one question carry two different answers
- Broken internal links, including links left behind when a page moves or is renamed
- English and Japanese counterparts, so one language cannot drift after the other is updated
Content that fails these checks does not go live.
Editorial independence
We do not bend content for revenue. We take no referral commission from facilities or providers, so no article exists to steer you toward a paying provider. No advertiser or partner decides our ratings or our ordering.
Services with a capital relationship to the operator (Cross Heart and Home Instead Japan) are compared by the same standard as anyone else. The caveats we write about them are the same too.
Dates and updates
The publication date is the day an article actually went live. An update date is added only when the substance changes. We do not backdate, postdate, or rotate dates for search rankings.
Structured data and the sitemap carry the same dates shown on the page. Articles containing rules or figures are revisited at points where they go stale, such as a policy revision or the turn of the fiscal year.
How we write
We gloss the jargon rather than assume it. “Yo-kaigo nintei” gets “the municipal assessment that decides how much insured care you can use,” and “chiiki hokatsu shien center” gets “the municipal desk for older residents and their families.”
We do not use alarmist language and we do not push you toward a conclusion. The aim is to leave you able to decide, on your own, who to contact next.
What this is not
Nothing on this site is individual advice. Each decision belongs with someone else:
- Medical decisions belong with a physician
- Legal decisions belong with a licensed professional
- Tax decisions belong with a tax professional
- Care decisions belong with the family and the professionals who can see the situation
Our articles exist to orient you before those conversations start. We do not provide medical care or diagnosis, and we do not do emergency response or hands-on care. If someone is at immediate risk, call 119 for an ambulance or 110 for the police, or contact your municipal office directly.
Corrections
If you find an error or something out of date, send the article URL through the contact form. We reply within two business days.
We check the report against primary sources and correct what is wrong. Substantive corrections are never silent: the update date changes with them. Comments and suggestions reach us at the same address.