For foreign residents and tourists who don't understand Japanese, seeking medical attention can be stressful because few doctors are proficient in English.
But some clinics and hospitals , including Kobayashi International Clinic in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, are making efforts to help those who can't speak the local tongue feel at home. And demand for such institutions is likely to rise as Japan looks to attract more foreign visitors in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Yoneyuki Kobayashi, head of the clinic, first noticed the needs of foreign patients while working part-time as a doctor in the mid-1980s at a resettlement promotion center for Indo-Chinese refugees in Yamato.