About This Publication

What we publish

This site publishes plain-language guides to healthcare in Japan, a library of multilingual administrative and consultation forms, and research-framed articles on health topics relevant to the foreign resident community.

The guides section covers 28 topics across six categories: health system basics, finding and receiving care, emergency situations, life stage health (pregnancy, children, elderly care), workplace and occupational health, and practical navigation skills such as understanding medical vocabulary and obtaining medical records. Each guide is written in English, cites verified official sources, and includes key Japanese terms with romaji transliteration.

The forms library documents 12 categories of medical and administrative forms that were available through the original amda-imic.com service, covering patient registration, worker's accident compensation, tuberculosis treatment, and related administrative processes, in nine languages: English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese.

Editorial independence

This publication operates independently. Our editorial decisions — which topics to cover, how to frame them, which sources to cite — are made solely on the basis of informational value to readers. We are not affiliated with any Japanese government body, healthcare provider network, employer, or commercial health service.

All content is written fresh. Every factual claim is sourced to an identified, authoritative publication — primarily the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), JETRO, prefecture health bureaus, the World Health Organization, and peer-reviewed literature via PubMed. No statistics are presented without a cited basis. For full source documentation, see the sources page.

Our editorial policy sets out how we handle corrections, conflicts of interest, evidence standards, and scope decisions.

The Japan section

The Japan section of this site is the primary content area. It covers healthcare navigation for the nine principal languages spoken by foreign residents in Japan. The forms library and guides are organized to serve readers who may have limited Japanese proficiency and need to understand what they will encounter at a clinic, hospital, municipal office, or public health center.

The Japan section also preserves a record of the multilingual health information resources that were available through the original amda-imic.com domain. Legacy URL paths from that service are maintained through redirects to the relevant current sections of this archive.

Domain history

The amda-imic.com domain was previously operated as a multilingual medical information center based in Japan, publishing health guidance and forms for foreign residents from 2013 through 2024. This site continues publishing at the same domain, under independent editorial management, with newly written content in the guides section and preserved access to the legacy forms archive.

Not medical advice

Nothing on this site constitutes medical advice. The guides explain how Japan's healthcare system is organized and how to navigate it as a foreign resident; they are not a substitute for consultation with a licensed healthcare provider. For emergencies in Japan, call 119 (ambulance and fire). For urgent medical questions, contact a clinic or hospital directly.

Error reporting

If you find a factual error, a broken link, or a source that no longer returns 200, please use the contact page to report it. We aim to review corrections within ten business days and update the affected page promptly.

Last reviewed: September 2026