A Health Checkup That Ends with Sushi
Translated from my original Japanese post (2018). 日本語の原文を読む →
Have you ever had a ningen dock (a comprehensive health checkup in Japan)?
I'm a curious person and have always been fascinated by them. I couldn't wait to find out what kind of machines they use and what the exams are like.
This time my wish finally came true and I went! Yay!
And it came with a free sushi lunch...!
It was a pretty fun experience, so if you're planning a ningen dock, give this a read!
Lucky Members of the ITS Health Insurance Society
The reason I got a free sushi lunch is my health insurance society, the Kanto IT Software Health Insurance Society (ITS Kenpo).
If you take the checkup at the "Sanno Health Checkup Center," which the society runs directly, you get a free lunch voucher for the restaurant in the same building!
*Depending on the checkup you choose, the lunch may not be sushi
What the Ningen Dock Includes
If you've never had one, a ningen dock is basically a slightly more thorough version of a regular health checkup.
These were the tests this time!
chest X-ray, stomach X-ray, vision, hearing, fundus exam, eye pressure, ECG, abdominal ultrasound
*Optional extras such as a brain scan and a mammogram (breast cancer) are available on request.
That looks like quite a lot, doesn't it?
But the only differences from the checkup I'd had up to last year are these.
Fundus exam: a test where light is shone into your eyes.
Eye pressure: a test where a puff of air is blown at your eyes.
Stomach X-ray: a test where you drink barium and roll around while X-rays are taken.
Abdominal ultrasound: a test where they look at your belly with ultrasound.
I've had eye pressure tests when getting a contact lens prescription at the eye doctor,
so it wasn't very different from the checkups I had through my company until last year, which was a bit of a letdown.
The price was ¥10,800.
Still, getting all these tests done at once saved time, so I was glad I did it.
If you don't get regular checkups, it's probably a good idea to have one once a year!
A One-Day Ningen Dock at the Sanno Health Checkup Center
The Sanno Health Checkup Center's changing rooms and exam rooms are on the 5th to 7th floors of the Sanno Kenpo Kaikan building in Akasaka.
You submit the medical questionnaire on the web in advance and show your examinee form at reception.
Choose your exam clothes...
Go into the changing room and change.
Take off metal items like necklaces, and wear nothing but underwear bottoms!
Holding a clear folder with your examinee form, you start with measurements like waist, height and weight.
Once the exams begin, you go up and down the stairs as directed, "Okay, next is the 5th floor," "Next is the 6th floor!", as you move through the tests.
The waiting room has a sofa, TV and magazines, but they call your name pretty quickly so there's no time to look at them (lol)
I'd bring your phone so you aren't left with nothing to do!
You can apparently check your progress online, and I waited about five minutes at most.
Feeling like a fish on a chopping board, I bustled from one place to the next, and the full set of tests was done in about two hours!
After paying at reception, the moment I'd been waiting for: I received the lunch voucher.
I wasn't allowed even water since morning, so I was starving (lol).
Lunch at Sushi Isshin
Sushi Isshin is on the first floor of the same building as the Sanno Health Checkup Center.
Of the restaurants in the Kenpo Kaikan buildings, it's hugely popular and famously hard to book.
I showed my voucher and sat down.
The restaurant was empty and the set was brought out right away!
The sushi was chutoro (medium fatty tuna), squid, akami (lean tuna), sea bream, salmon, mackerel, conger eel, kappa maki (cucumber roll) and tamago (egg)!
It also came with miso soup, mozuku seaweed in vinegar, chawanmushi (savory egg custard) and takuan (pickled daikon).
Maybe because the sets are made up in advance, the surface of the sushi was a little dry, but the portion was solid and the fish was fresh!
Even at a relatively cheap sushi place, a set meal runs about ¥1,000.
Considering that, it's a great deal...!
By the way, there's another directly run checkup center, the Okubo Health Checkup Center, where apparently you can get Chinese food...!
You could even choose by what you want to eat after your checkup (lol).
If you want your checkup to be as good a deal as possible, definitely try the directly run checkup centers.
How to Find a Hospital for a Ningen Dock
For anyone planning a ningen dock,
I went through the websites of nearby hospitals that offer them one by one
and compared them, which was a real chore...
If you want the best deal but hate the searching, a Japanese site called "Ningen Dock Koko Karada" lets you compare checkups at many hospitals by area and by test, and you earn Recruit and Ponta points when you book through it.
See you next time!
