Hospitals in Kyoto

Kyoto has excellent hospitals and almost none of them are built for a foreign visitor walking in off the street. The difficulty is process rather than quality: the big hospitals expect you to arrive with a referral letter from a local clinic, they charge a surcharge if you do not have one, first-visit reception is weekday mornings only and closes around eleven, and English is the exception even in a city that lives on tourism. Nothing about that is hostile; it is simply how Japanese hospitals are meant to be reached.

So this page is not a list of Kyoto’s best hospitals. It is a list of the three that a traveller can actually be seen at, chosen for a 24-hour emergency department, a published English-language service and a location you can reach from where visitors stay. Each name opens a full page with the address, the phone numbers, the map and what a visit involves. Details were checked against each hospital’s own website in September 2026; if a number fails or you are in doubt, dial 119.

The 3 at a glance

Bed counts are approximate. Tap a name for the full page.

The hospitals

Which hospital should I go to?

For an accident, a collapse or anything frightening, go to Japanese Red Cross Kyoto Daiichi Hospital at Tofukuji: its emergency and critical care centre runs 24 hours, takes walk-in patients as well as ambulances, and is one stop from Kyoto Station. If you are staying around Gion, Kawaramachi or Demachiyanagi and need to be understood, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine Hospital on Kawaramachi-dori is the one that states English-speaking staff are on call on weekdays. For something that is not an emergency, or if you are staying west of the centre or out towards Arashiyama, Kyoto City Hospital at Mibu is the city’s own general hospital and the least forbidding of the three to approach. In a life-or-death emergency, call 119 and let the crew choose.

What will it cost?

More than most visitors expect, because Japan’s national health insurance covers residents and not you. A traveller is a self-paying patient and owes the full amount, not the thirty per cent a resident pays. On top of that sits the referral surcharge: 7,700 yen at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, 7,000 yen plus consumption tax at Kyoto Daiichi, and an unpublished amount at Kyoto City Hospital, all charged on a first visit made without a letter from a clinic. Kyoto Daiichi also charges 7,700 yen in the daytime, or 5,500 yen out of hours and on holidays, to someone who uses its emergency department for a problem that turns out not to be an emergency. The ambulance itself is free. What follows it is not.

Insurance, deposits and paperwork

Assume you will pay the hospital yourself and claim afterwards. Japanese hospitals rarely bill a foreign insurer directly, none of the three advertises that it does, and settlement is usually expected at the end of the visit in cash or by card — bring a card that works abroad and more cash than you think. Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine publishes guidance for foreign patients without valid Japanese health insurance and asks them to check in advance whether their own insurer will accept a Japanese receipt; that is a good question to put to your policy’s assistance line before you go anywhere. Take your passport, your policy number and a list of any medication you take, and ask for an itemised receipt and a medical certificate before you leave.

Getting there and ambulances

Kyoto is a bus city, and all three hospitals have a city bus stop at or near the gate: buses 202, 207 and 208 for Kyoto Daiichi, buses 4, 7 and 205 from Kyoto Station for the prefectural university hospital, buses 23 and 75 for Kyoto City Hospital. Buses are slow in the tourist season and stuck solid on Shijo-dori in the afternoon; a taxi is quicker and easy to find, and the subway and the Keihan and JR lines beat both. For an emergency, dial 119. The call and the ride cost nothing, the crew decide which hospital you go to, and the referral rule does not apply to them. If you are unsure whether it is an emergency, #7119 gives advice.

Getting seen without a referral letter

The rule catches nearly every visitor. A large Japanese hospital wants you to come through a clinic, and charges a selection fee — the 選定療養費 — when you arrive without the letter that clinic would have written: 7,700 yen at the prefectural university hospital, 7,000 yen plus tax at Kyoto Daiichi, an unstated sum at Kyoto City Hospital. A clinic near your hotel costs far less, will see you the same morning, and writes the letter if you need the hospital. Of the three, Kyoto Daiichi says its emergency centre turns nobody away and takes walk-ins, and Kyoto City Hospital takes emergency patients at any hour; the prefectural university hospital asks for a letter in principle and warns of a long wait without one. In a real emergency none of this applies: 119 bypasses the lot.

Pharmacies

Japanese pharmacies are excellent and strictly regulated, which cuts both ways. Drugstores — Matsumoto Kiyoshi, Sugi, Kokumin, and the chains along Shijo-dori and Teramachi — sell painkillers, cold and stomach remedies, plasters and rehydration drinks, and many stay open late. What they will not sell you is an antibiotic: those need a doctor’s prescription, dispensed by a separate 薬局 pharmacy usually sited next door to the clinic that wrote it. Bring enough of your own medication for the trip, keep it in its original box, and check before you fly, because Japan restricts some ingredients that are ordinary at home, including certain decongestants and codeine-based cough medicines. For a fever that will not break, a head injury or an animal bite, see a doctor rather than a shop.

Kyoto travel guide / Kyoto hotels / Kyoto tourist map / Japan visa guide / Japan destinations / Hospitals in Japan / All hospitals

Travel information, not medical advice.

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