Priya Breaks Down Travel Insurance for Trips to Japan
I met Priya at a dinner where someone mentioned Japan and the conversation turned, very quickly, to hospitals and insurance. She has been to Japan four times and she has bought travel insurance before every single trip. She is not someone who panics about things going wrong. She is someone who has watched a friend spend two weeks dealing with the fallout from a medical incident in Tokyo without adequate cover, and she found the experience instructive enough to never skip the insurance step again, for Japan or anywhere else.
Japan is one of the safest countries in the world to visit and also one of the most expensive places in the world to receive medical treatment if something goes wrong. These two facts exist simultaneously and the second one does not get discussed enough. The safety record makes people complacent. Priya prefers not to be complacent about things that can be avoided with a relatively small amount of money spent before you leave.
What you actually need cover for
Medical and emergency evacuation is the most important line on any travel insurance policy and Japan is a place where this really matters. Hospital costs in Japan are high and the system, while excellent, operates primarily in Japanese. Having an insurer with a 24-hour English-language assistance line that can liaise with a hospital on your behalf is worth a significant amount on its own.
Trip cancellation and curtailment cover matters for Japan specifically because flights from Europe, North America, or Australia are not cheap and losing one without recourse is a meaningful financial hit. Japan also sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and experiences earthquakes with some regularity, most minor and some not.
Baggage cover is the third thing worth checking. Japan is not a place where things get stolen, which is one of its many excellent qualities, but luggage gets lost in transit and laptops get dropped and cameras get wet in the rain during a visit to a shrine and the replacement costs are real.
What to look for in a policy
Read the medical coverage limit first. Anything under one million pounds or the equivalent in your currency is not sufficient for Japan. Priya looks for policies with at least five million in medical coverage.
Check the excess carefully. A low monthly premium with a high excess is often a worse deal than it appears, particularly for medical claims where you may need to pay upfront and claim back.
Pre-existing conditions are where most policy small print gets complicated. If you have any medical history worth mentioning, declare it and make sure your policy covers it.
A few Japan-specific notes
Some activities that are entirely normal parts of a Japan trip, skiing in Hokkaido, hiking up mountain trails, cycling between towns, may require additional cover or may be excluded from standard policies. Check before you book anything adventurous.
Keep your policy documents and insurer contact number on your phone and also printed out, because a phone with a dead battery in an emergency is not useful.
The Best in Travels,
Your Friend Fushia