Two separate bills
What a visit costs
There are two bills. Ours is agreed before you go. Theirs is paid at the hospital on the day. Mixing them is how people feel misled, even when every individual number was accurate. We would rather you see both in one place.
What you pay us
The companion fee is $59.90 per area you want help with. Each area adds about 2 hours. You see the running total on the enquiry form as you tick boxes. Sending the form books nothing and charges nothing. A person replies within 24 hours with a time, a suggested hospital and that same figure written out.
The fee covers an English-speaking companion for the visit, interpreting both ways, registration and queueing on your behalf, and a written summary afterwards. It does not cover a taxi, a hotel transfer, or anyone standing in for a doctor. If the plan changes and you cancel, you tell us; an enquiry is not a contract.
What you pay the hospital
Their items are typically ¥80–385 each. A visit that adds several — a consultation, a hands-on treatment, a herbal formula — can reach around ¥1,200–¥1,750. These are their prices. They can change. They are paid directly at the hospital on the day, at their window or machine, in their currency.
Our fee never includes the hospital registration fee, the practitioner consultation fee, individual services you decide to have, medicine you are prescribed, or your travel to and from the building. If a sentence on this site ever sounded as if those were bundled, it was badly written. They are not.
How a figure becomes the figure
You choose areas on the form because that is how we plan time, not because we are selling a menu of results. The practitioner decides what to do once they have seen you. If they suggest a second item, the companion asks the price and tells you before you nod. You can decline it. Declining does not waste the visit; it is the visit working as it should.
Herbs are a common extra. They have their own line on the bill and their own window. You can take the written formula home and decide later. We will not tell you that you ought to collect them. We will tell you what they cost if you ask in the room.
What we will not do with money
We do not mark up the hospital’s charges. We do not take a cut of the pharmacy. We do not surprise you with a “coordination fee” after the fact. If a morning runs long because the queue ran long, we would rather that be a conversation than a silent extra hour on an invoice you have not seen.
If you only want to know whether the trip is worth the cost at all, the planning conversation is free. It exists for the cases where the honest answer is that you should spend the morning on something else.
A worked example, not a quote
Say you tick two areas on the form. Our fee is two times $59.90, shown before you send anything. At the hospital you might pay a registration fee, a consultation fee, and one hands-on item — three lines that often sit inside the ¥80–385 band. If the practitioner then suggests a herbal formula, that is a fourth line, and you hear it before you walk to the window. A morning that adds several items can approach ¥1,200–¥1,750. A morning that stays with the talk and one treatment stays lower. Neither figure is a promise. Both are why we print a range and an upper bound rather than a single cheerful number.
The companion’s job in that arithmetic is to keep the two wallets apart and to say the next figure out loud. Yours is to decide. If you only have cash for the hospital band you were expecting, say so in the room. They can stop. We will not fill the silence with a suggestion that you should spend more.
