Facility Search
Japan's care facilities split into categories with very different costs, admission rules, and waiting realities: tokuyo, rouken, dementia group homes, private paid homes, and serviced senior housing. These articles help a family name the right category first, so the comparison that follows is between genuinely comparable places.
Memory careStart with the pillar guide for this topic: Nursing homes in Japan for foreigners. It covers the system end to end, and the 23 articles below go deeper on one decision each.
If you are at the very beginning, the sequence is the same for every topic. Apply for a care-needs certification at the community support center for your parent's municipality, then use the wait to compare costs and housing. The first consultation with us is 30 minutes and free.
What to clarify before comparing nursing homes, care facilities, and senior housing.
2026-07-05
One facility visit, done during a short trip home, needs three things to be worth it: a set time of day, three categories of questions, and a copy of the important-matter document (juyo jiko setsumeisho) to take with you.
Read article2026-07-05
Every Japanese care facility funded by long-term care insurance is legally required to disclose staffing, service, and fee data on a national database, and prefectures publish separate records of guidance and administrative penalties, so families can check a candidate before they ever book a flight.
Read article2026-07-05
A private care home entrance fee in Japan is not a purchase; it is prepaid rent that amortizes on a fixed schedule, and by law you get an unused portion back if your parent leaves within 90 days or dies before the schedule ends.
Read article2026-07-05
A parent on tube feeding, insulin, or suctioning is not shut out of Japanese long-term care; the nurse staffing ratio of the facility type, not the diagnosis, decides whether admission is possible.
Read article2026-07-05
A support inquiry letter (fuyo shokai) does not obligate an adult child abroad to match a parent's living standard, only to help within their own means, and several public systems, including an asset test near ¥10 million for a single resident, can lower a facility bill before arrears force a move.
Read article2026-07-05
Most facility-initiated terminations in Japan run on roughly a 90-day notice period, and the grounds are usually one of four things: rising medical need, long hospitalization, unpaid fees, or unmanageable behavior. Families abroad can contest an unclear notice through the kokuho rengo complaint system while lining up the next placement in parallel.
Read article2026-07-05
Admission runs on two different clocks: a tokuyo (special nursing home) is ranked by a monthly priority-points committee, while most fee-based homes admit on a first-qualified, roughly one-month document-to-move-in timeline. Knowing which clock applies changes what a family abroad should do first.
Read article2026-07-05
Move-in day itself takes an afternoon, but the paperwork that protects your parent's insurance, the jusho-chi tokurei filing that keeps their home municipality as insurer, has a window of roughly two weeks and nobody at the facility will chase you to file it.
Read article2026-07-05
When a parent moves cities to enter a facility near family, two rules decide what happens next: the care-need certification only carries over if the new municipality receives it within 14 days, and which city ends up as the insurer depends on the facility type, not on where the parent used to live.
Read article2026-07-05
Five clauses decide what happens to your parent and your money later: discharge conditions, fee revision, entrance-fee refund, added costs, and cancellation. Japan's jūyō jikō setsumeisho (重要事項説明書) is legally required to spell out all five before you sign.
Read article2026-07-05
A facility-to-facility move in Japan usually means overlapping two bills for two to four weeks, a 30-day cancellation notice at the current facility, and a full entrance-fee refund only if the original move-in was within the last 90 days.
Read article2026-07-05
A trial stay (taiken nyukyo) at a Japanese paid nursing home usually runs ¥5,000 to ¥15,000 a night, is not available at every facility type, and MHLW guidance requires paid homes to offer one before you sign a contract.
Read article2026-07-05
A care home fee increase in Japan is legal if the contract's fee-change clause and notice period were followed, but the amount and who absorbs it depend on whether the rise comes from a national reimbursement revision, a standard cost adjustment, or the facility's own management and food charges.
Read article2026-07-05
A tokuyo wait commonly runs months to a couple of years, and the 12 months in between are not empty time: rouken stays, short-stay rotations capped at 30 consecutive covered days, and a heavier home-care plan carry the family until a bed opens.
Read article2026-07-05
Couple rooms exist mainly in kaigo-tsuki and jutaku-gata paid homes and in sa-ko-ju housing, not in tokuyo, and most operators can keep two spouses under one roof even when one needs far more care than the other.
Read article2026-06-04
The signals that home care in Japan is reaching its limit, the guilt around putting a parent in a nursing home, and how to prepare and compare before the move.
Read article2026-06-03
How nursing homes and elderly care facilities in Japan work — facility types, costs, language support, and what foreign residents and overseas families should check before comparing.
Read article2026-06-04
The parent is no longer safe at home and refuses every facility. Families searching this phrase are usually exhausted, frightened, and out of ideas, and the truthful answer has two halves: what is genuinely not possible in Japan, and the legitimate routes that exist when safety runs out.
Read article2026-06-06
Your parent keeps saying take me home. How to tell adjustment from a real problem, raising concerns with a Japanese facility, and when moving out is right.
Read article2026-06-06
What assisted living maps to in Japan: the sa-ko-ju and residential-home middle layer, who it fits, which documents to read, and the exit conditions to check.
Read article2026-06-06
Japan's group homes house people with dementia in units of nine or fewer, living something like household life. Who qualifies, what it costs, and the same-town rule.
Read article2026-06-06
The tokuyo is Japan's public-style nursing home: heavy care, low cost, income reductions, waiting lists. How admission really works and how families play the list.
Read article2026-06-06
The rouken exists for the gap between hospital and home: rehabilitation-focused stays with a doctor on staff, reviewed every three months. How families use it well.
Read articleBrowse every topic on the full article index, or see all care system guides.
