When more than one applies
Real cases do not sort themselves neatly into one box. You live abroad, and your parent is a foreign national living in Japan. Families with overlapping situations are the majority, not the exception.
Whichever page you read first, the opening move is the same. Apply for a care-needs certification at the community support center for your parent's municipality, then use the waiting time to line up costs and housing options. That groundwork does not change with your situation.
What differs is where you are standing. If you cannot see how your parent is doing day to day, start with the families-abroad page. If the person needing care already lives in Japan on a foreign passport, start there instead. If a move to Japan is still being weighed, the relocation page covers what to check before anyone books a flight.
Overlapping situations
These are the combinations we hear most often at the first consultation.
- Adult children overseas and a parent living alone in Japan, with the homework piling up between visits
- A foreign national widowed by a Japanese spouse, with the person who handled the Japanese paperwork now gone
- A couple who spent their working life abroad and are weighing a return, with care, housing and paperwork all moving at once
- A long-term foreign resident whose care has begun, with a family that operates in English
The starting three are identical in every case. File the certification, fix the order of what to confirm, and agree inside the family who handles what.
Talking to us before care starts
Care has not started. Your parent knows nothing about it. The family does not agree. None of that is a reason to wait.
The quiet period is when the options are still open. A certification takes a median of 39.3 days from application to the review board's decision, and a special nursing home normally admits only at care level 3 or above. Start moving after a discharge date is set and some options are already gone.
How the first step works
The first consultation is 30 minutes and free. We take the situation and the deadlines, then set out what to confirm and in what order. After that you get the scope, duration and fees in writing, and nothing starts until you agree to it. Up to that point there is no charge.
The sequence is set out in how it works, the work itself in services. To see it run end to end, the fastest read is case studies.
What we hold to
- The parent's own wishes stay in the plan. A plan built only around the family's convenience stalls later
- We take no side but yours. No referral commissions, so comparisons stay on the family's side of the table
- We stay out of licensed territory. Medical, legal and tax judgments go to the professionals who hold those licences
Languages and coverage
We work in English and Japanese. Consultations run by video call or phone, and we set the time around your time zone when you are overseas.
In-person work such as visits and accompaniment is centered on Kanagawa. Elsewhere we check case by case whether we can work alongside the local care manager and providers. We do not perform medical acts, make diagnoses, respond to emergencies or provide hands-on care.
If you are a clinician, care provider or professional who meets foreign residents and overseas families in your own work, use the partner inquiry route and tell us the kind of referral or coordination you have in mind.