By mid-morning my brain was already fried. An online government form had made me scan my ID card over and over, and at the health checkup I had to explain things I'd already told them in advance. And the checkup wasn't even over yet. City hall was still to come. Officially, my role today was "customer." Somewhere along the way it turned into a product rolling down an inspection line, plus an unpaid debugger for the government's systems.
1. The checkup takes about 1.5 hours, and it drags without your phone
Each test is quick. The waiting is the problem. Check-in, height and weight, blood draw, eye test, hearing test, ECG, chest X-ray, a talk with the doctor: between every short step there's a stretch of "wait until they call you." At work checkups I'd done before, the staff sat in a row and you shuffled sideways from one to the next. This time the rooms stayed put and you walked around the building. Thank god I had my phone. Without it, I'd have spent 1.5 hours going full Anya: "Is it... still not my turn...?"
2. Front-opening gown, quiet halls: wait, is this a spa?
You change into a gown that opens in the front, plus shorts. Quiet hallways, sofas, someone calling numbers, walk to a room, sit down again. Honestly, very Japanese-hot-stone-spa. Even the staff had weirdly soothing voices. For a moment it felt less like a medical checkup and more like a wellness retreat. Except what waits in the next room isn't a warm stone bed. It's the ECG. Lie down, stay quiet, don't move. Give those instructions to someone running on no sleep and you've basically started a nap. I almost dozed off. For real.
3. The veteran nurse and my "same batch" buddies
The person doing the blood draw had serious pro energy, and it was so reassuring. I barely felt the needle. I said, "That didn't hurt at all," and she replied, "Oh good. Okay, next..." Compliment processed in 0.5 seconds, straight on to the next step. To me it was a miracle. To her, I was probably just one of hundreds that day.
Also, people who checked in around the same time keep ending up next to you at every station. The same name gets called right before the eye test, right before the ECG, right before the X-ray. You never say a word to each other, but you learn their name. Before long I was tracking their progress: "Oh, my batch-mate's already done with the ECG." A weird sense of being in the same class, at a health checkup of all places.
4. Eyesight 1.5 and 1.2, and the hearing test is a hard-mode mini-game
The eye test felt harder than usual. My results were 1.5 in one eye and 1.2 in the other (that's Japan's decimal scale). "Oh, they test all the way up to 1.5?" I was a little surprised. The hearing test is even more of a game. "Was that a beep?" "Is that just the machine?" "Press now? Not yet?" It's basically a yes-or-no quiz on sounds you can barely hear.
Under Japanese law, the hearing check in a new-hire health exam covers hearing at 1,000 Hz and 4,000 Hz.[1] Health ministry material describes it as checking whether you can hear tones at a set loudness.[2] All I can say is it felt like I was barely scraping by, and I didn't get results on the spot. So I'm not diagnosing myself with hearing loss. As a game, though, it was definitely hard mode.
5. Checkup cleared. Reward: 1 vending machine coin. Equip Monster, head to city hall
After about 1.5 hours on the inspection line, they handed me a coin good for one free drink from the vending machine. So, what to pick? Not water. Not tea. The Monster, because it looked like the most expensive thing in there. Short on sleep, beaten up by an online government form, re-explaining my info at the checkup, nearly passing out during the ECG, and now equipping an energy drink. In an RPG, that clearly means there's another dungeon ahead. There was. City hall.
6. At city hall: "It's on my phone, can you type it in?" The human help desk wins
That morning online, I'd typed everything myself and scanned my card over and over. So at city hall I switched strategies. I showed my new address on my phone: "It's right here." Then the clerk typed it in for me. So, so easy. All I had to do was hand over the info. I even got to vent about how the online form refused to go through all morning.
Online, I was the data entry person, the ID check person and the tech support person, all at once. At the counter, a real human types it in for you. The human help desk is undefeated.
7. "Why does it say National Health Insurance?" A total amateur works out the timeline
Halfway through, the clerk looked at an old record and went, "Huh, why is this showing National Health Insurance?" I'm no expert on the system either. But I looked at the dates. The info was from when I'd moved out of my parents' place and started living alone, before I had a job. So I said, "I don't really know how this works, but is it because this was filed before I started working?"
According to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, National Health Insurance generally covers people who live in Japan and aren't on another plan, like health insurance through an employer.[3] If that record really was from before I got a job and joined my company's plan, then seeing National Health Insurance there makes total sense. I wasn't claiming to know the rules. I just read the dates and went, "Could it be this?" Today's customer has now moved on to troubleshooting city hall's records. Still not getting paid.
8. You register your new address after you move, and people show up early anyway
You don't file your moving-in notice before you move. The official Mynaportal guide says to file it within 14 days of the day you actually start living at your new address.[4] So I didn't do it this time.
But according to the counter staff, a surprising number of people come in to register before they've even moved. I guess "let's just get it all done today" wins out. I get it. But your resident registration isn't a reservation for the future.
9. Moving-out notice 15 days early: "If you're busy, we can take it" / "Let's say I'm busy, lol"
I also asked when to file my moving-out notice. The counter said they usually tell people to come about 1 to 2 weeks before the move. My schedule put me at 15 days. One day too early. Then the clerk said, more or less, that if I was busy and had a reason, they could accept it.
So I said, "Okay, then let's say I'm busy, lol." The clerk laughed: "Sure, we'll go with that." And just like that, it was done.
To be clear, this isn't some nationwide "15 days before" rule. That particular counter was just being flexible with me. Online, no matter how many times I scanned my card, the door stayed shut. At the counter, a quick chat between two humans bought me a one-day pass. The gap between systems and people is wild.
10. Bottom line: I've been doing free bug reports all day. Pay me
Morning: reproducing bugs in an online government form. Checkup: re-explaining info I'd already sent. Spa gown, inspection line. Almost falling asleep during the ECG. The veteran nurse's lightning-fast blood draw. Memorizing the names of my batch-mates. Hard-mode eye and hearing mini-games. Reward: a vending machine coin. Monster equipped, off to city hall. Letting the clerk do the typing, working out from the timeline why an old record said National Health Insurance, and checking the timing for the moving-in and moving-out paperwork.
If I wrote today up like a résumé: cross-agency user experience testing for government and medical services, bug reproduction, requirements checking, data consistency checks and timeline-based root cause analysis.
Pay: 1 Monster.
Something's not right.
Pay me.
