I might be going to japan after college, but one of the things that get me worried is healthcare. Whats the system over there? is social like in europe? or more like the US? And what about quality?
Closer to Europe than America. Your first year is basically free (I think I paid like 30,000 yen) as it's based on your previous years income. However, remember that there's some weird skewing going on. They block it off in either 4 or 6 month increments. So you're here for a year, get 12 months of insurance for almost nothing. Then your next year's salary is calculated, and you start paying X percent for your insurance. Just note, you're paying for LAST YEARS insurance. At least a portion of it. Many taxes work this way. When I left the country in October of 2004, I still owed taxes through January. They've got this stupid system set up where when foreigners leave, they always owe X months worth, and most will never pay it b/c they're English teachers that'll never come back. Anyways, there's two types of healthcare, and which one you get depends on what you do with your life. There's national healthcare (kokumin hoken) which covers 70% of your medical bills. And then there's shakaihoken (what's this in English?) which covers 80%. The latter is for full time employees, while the former is for non-working people (moms, students, etc). You should Google around a bit... maybe go look at Jref (although of course, take everything w/ a grain of salt). Japanese doctors are famous for selling 6 kinds of placebo, and 1 kind of medicine for something as simple as a cold. Why? They sell the medicine, not a pharmacist. There are also horror stories of mis-prescription (a friend got kidney failure medicine when he had exhuastion) and if you require any type of skin-breaking procedure, you should look into doing it in basically any place other than Japan. North Korea might even be better.
You pay for it one way or another. It's just labeled as something else in countries w/ social health care.
