Thanks.

You sign up for it at the city or ward office where you will get your alien registration card. It's a good idea to get ordinary travel insurance to cover the first 2 weeks or so until you are able to visit your municipal office to apply.

Thanks.

Perhaps travel insurance is actually more appropriate.. it'll cover me much better if I have to pay expensive medical bills. Are you sure I'm required to take their 70%?

A comprehensive private plan really seems better than kokumin kenko hoken, if I can avoid it.. and as I said above, kokumin kenko hoken alone doesn't cover me enough.

This is the insurance that pretty much everyone in Japan has, or is legally supposed to have. As of next year people will have to show proof of being enrolled when they renew their visas, which you will be doing if you want to stay longer than 6 months. It's up to you, but as I said, it's a legal requirement. If you are really concerned about the 30%, you can look into top-up plans- most of the expat health insurance companies now have them.

Coming from the UK, I might be wrong but I think the limit is automatically 12 months (no 6 month renewal).

student visa holders are generally eligible because the visas are valid for 1year+3 months.

Cissehands, it's worth looking into this a bit further (I bet you will find more info if you Google "health insurance working holiday visa Japan" or similar, but if you aren't happy with the 70% contribution (remember the insurance only costs about 2,000 yen a month for the first year, you might want to look at an expat health insurance plan- again, a Google will bring up lots of info for you.

I've emailed the japanese embassy in the UK, asking for their advice.

And if you want to have more coverage - get something like AFLAC, AHD and whatever names those companies have. They run cheap, too and you will be fully insured. Just keep one thing in mind: most of those insurance companies require that you are capable of reading and writing Japanese!

With NHI, you pay 30% of medical expenses but there's a cap on how much you have to pay in a single month. The cap is something like 80,000 yen. It's really not that bad for the first year when your premiums are 2,000-3,000 yen a month.

yeah I'm sure the NHI is fine for price, I don't think it's expensive. I'd still like cover for more than 70% though, because even with the 80,000 a month cap on payments.. I don't know if I could handle paying that for very long.. I don't think anyone in my family would be able to help me out with money. maybe my girlfriends family could give me a loan but I wouldnt like to rely on that.

So, give it a go for the NHI when you get to Japan but have an alternative option if they decline to insure you, because they aren't supposed to and if they do it's just luck. I'd be a little worried about the validity of the policy if something major happened and attracted a lot of attention to it too, stuff besides basic doctor checkups.