Hospitals in Tokyo

Tokyo has more hospitals than almost any city on earth and a visitor can walk into hardly any of them. The obstacle is not cost or quality or waiting, but process: the large hospitals are meant to be reached through a neighbourhood clinic, they add a surcharge for anyone who arrives without a referral letter, first-visit consultations are usually weekday mornings only, and English is the exception even here. So this page does not list the biggest or the most famous hospitals. It lists three that hold accreditation for treating foreign patients, staff interpreters or run an international department — the ones that will actually see you.

For each there is the practical detail: what kind of hospital it is, roughly how big, where it is, how to call it, what it charges someone without a referral letter, and what its own website says about English. Details were checked against each hospital’s own website in September 2026, and against the accreditation register held by the Japan Medical Education Foundation. Switchboards change; if a number fails and the problem is serious, dial 119.

The 5 at a glance

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

The hospitals

Which hospital should I go to?

Start from where you are staying, because Tokyo is large and its traffic is slow. In Shinjuku, the National Center for Global Health and Medicine runs an international health care centre and is the one that will see an uninsured foreign patient for sudden illness or injury without arranging it first. In Shibuya and Ebisu, Tokyo Metropolitan Hiroo runs a 24-hour emergency centre and has interpreters of its own. In Minato, Saiseikai Central states it has interpreter staff and sits three minutes from Akabanebashi. East of the river, Bokutoh covers Asakusa and the Skytree. In Shinagawa, NTT Medical Center is the one that says outright you can be seen without a referral letter. In a real emergency call 119: the ambulance chooses, and the referral rule does not apply.

What will it cost?

Japan’s national health insurance covers residents at about seventy per cent and a visitor is not covered by it at all, so you pay the whole amount. An outpatient consultation with tests runs to a few tens of thousands of yen; an admission runs into the hundreds of thousands and a stay in intensive care very much further. On top of that sits the referral-letter surcharge: ¥7,000 at Hiroo, ¥7,700 at NTT Medical Center Tokyo, ¥11,000 at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine. Two of the three add a further out-of-hours charge for cases they judge not urgent, so the middle of a Tuesday morning is much the cheapest time to be ill. The 119 ambulance and the ride itself are free; everything that happens after the doors open is not.

Insurance, deposits and paperwork

Most Japanese hospitals will not bill a foreign insurer directly, so travel insurance here is nearly always pay-and-claim: you settle at the cashier, usually the same day, in yen cash or by credit card, and reclaim it at home. Two of the three hospitals on this page say in as many words that a patient without a Japanese insurance card is treated as self-paying. Carry your passport, the subscriber number from your policy, a list of any medication you take and, if you have one, a medicine record book. Phone the assistance line on your policy before you go if there is time: it can open the claim and sometimes name a hospital it deals with. Ask for an itemised receipt and an English-language medical certificate before you leave, not afterwards.

Getting there and ambulances

Dial 119 for an ambulance. The call and the ride are free, the crew asks a short series of questions and then chooses the hospital, and the referral-letter rule does not apply to an emergency admission. Crews rarely speak much English, so have a simple sentence ready naming the problem and the address, or hand the phone to a Japanese speaker; the hotel front desk is the fastest route to one. If you are not sure whether it is an emergency at all, #7119 gives advice on exactly that question. For anything that can wait, the train is faster than a taxi across central Tokyo at almost any hour, and all three hospitals are within ten minutes of a station.

Getting seen without a referral letter

Japanese hospitals are meant to be reached through a clinic, and a large one charges a surcharge to anyone who arrives without a referral letter — commonly 7,700 yen, and more outside normal hours. Saiseikai Central publishes 7,700 yen, rising to 11,000 on a holiday or out of hours. NTT Medical Center is the plainest of the five: it states that a patient without a letter can still be seen. Four of the five hold JMIP accreditation, Japan’s national certification for accepting international patients, which is the closest thing to a guarantee that a hospital has thought about foreign patients before you arrive. None of it applies in an emergency: call 119, and the ambulance crew decides where you go.

Pharmacies

Japanese pharmacies work differently from Thai or Vietnamese ones. Prescription medicines, antibiotics among them, are dispensed only against a doctor’s prescription at a dispensing pharmacy, usually the one beside the clinic that wrote it. For everything else there is the drugstore — Matsumoto Kiyoshi, Welcia, Sundrug and their competitors are on every other corner in Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ginza, several open late or around the clock, and they sell cold remedies, painkillers, stomach medicines, rehydration salts and dressings over the counter. Staff will often find someone with a little English, and the packaging is Japanese-only, so photograph what you take. Bring your own supply of any regular medication: some drugs sold freely at home need a permit to import.

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

Travel information, not medical advice.

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