Japan's medicine and longevity culture, explained by a doctor who lives here.
JAPAN WELLNESS TRAVEL is a newsletter for visitors who want more from Japan than photographs — access to its preventive medicine, its longevity habits, and the quiet places that most travelers never find.
Written by a practising doctor. Based in Japan. In plain English, for foreigners.
Who this is for
You’re planning a trip to Japan, and you’re the kind of person who reads the ingredient label.
You’ve heard that Japan has the world’s most thorough health screenings and one of the longest life expectancies on earth, and you want to know how to actually reach that as a visitor — not just admire it from a distance.
This newsletter is for you if you want to:
Get a full-body health screening in Japan (a ningen dock) as a foreigner — and understand what your results mean
Understand Japanese longevity habits — what the food, the bathing, the walking and the rituals actually do, with the evidence
Find the places worth your limited days, chosen by someone who lives here and thinks about health for a living
Who writes it
I’m Doctor from Japan — an international medical doctor, licensed in Europe and in Japan.
I grew up in Japan and left at 17 to study medicine in Europe. After graduating I came back, because this is the country I love and the one I understand from the inside. That path is also why I spend most of my working life translating between two systems: one that excels at treating disease, and one that quietly excels at catching it early.
I write here under Doctor from Japan rather than my own name — my clinical work makes that simpler. Everything else on this page is exactly as it is.
I’ve walked international patients through Japanese hospitals, sat with them while their results were explained, and translated those results line by line. I’ve also seen the other side. During my hospital rotation I met a 58-year-old executive who had been “too busy” for checkups his whole life. He came in for back pain. It was Stage IV colon cancer. What stayed with me wasn’t the diagnosis — it was the attending physician saying, almost to himself, “If he’d had a ningen dock five years ago, we might have caught this.”
That sentence is why this newsletter exists.
What you get for free
Free issues cover three things, in rotation:
How Japan’s medical system works for foreign visitors — screenings, costs, booking, language
The evidence behind Japanese longevity habits — what holds up, what doesn’t
Places chosen through a doctor’s eyes — with real access details, prices, and timing
What paid subscribers get
The tools I build for my own clients, plus every in-depth issue:
🏥 The Ningen Dock Clinic Guide — Tokyo and Osaka facilities compared: what each course includes, English support, cost, and how far ahead you need to book
🧪 Read Your Own Results — a line-by-line translation of a Japanese health screening report, and what each value actually means
🗺️ Complete sample itineraries — day-by-day, with transport, timing and real costs (e.g. 7 days: a health screening in Tokyo, then an onsen reset in Hakone)
✉️ Booking templates — the English emails and phone scripts that get a foreigner an appointment at a Japanese clinic
💬 Ask the Doctor — a monthly issue answering subscribers’ questions directly
📚 Full access to the complete archive
$9/month or $90/year. Annual subscribers also get one free 30-minute consultation.
⚕️ Everything here is education, not personal medical advice. I’m a doctor, but I’m not your doctor — for decisions about your own health, please see a physician who can examine you.
Working with me directly
Beyond the newsletter, I help a small number of visitors each month through Medical Checkup Japan Concierge.
If you read one thing first, make it this: The Complete Guide to Ningen Dock for Foreign Travelers in Japan
