I’m pursuing early retirement in Japan, but still need to work another 5 years before being able to apply for PR. Compared to the US, Japan is far more affordable (e.g., housing, healthcare, transportation).
I assume the Japanese government would expect me to continue working. But my plan is to quit and enjoy the benefits of national health insurance. Is this possible? I want to check before investing several more years. And I don’t want to ask this type of question to immigration. For Americans, health insurance is tied to our employer so it’s one of the major issues that early retirees deal with.
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With PR you can stay in Japan and never work another day if you so choose. You would also be obligated to enroll in national health insurance if you chose to do so, so yes, you would have health insurance.
Once you retire you would need to go to your city or ward office and get health insurance for yourself. Your monthly insurance payment would be based on your income.
You’re likely to get better answers to this over in /r/JapanFinance, and on the website retirejapan.
That said, you can sign up for National Health Insurance if you have no job. It does not provide quite as good a coverage as shakai hokken from your company but it’s still very good. The premiums are tied to your previous year’s income so the first year might be expensive but after that it should be quite cheap, depending on what sort of income you have for retirement.
You are obligated to have health insurance. If you don’t get shakai hoken though your job, you have to pay for the national health insurance directly to the government.
Here is a good post from a couple of years ago: [Early retirement in Japan](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/fmxxdo/early_retirement_in_japan/).
You’ll be particularly interested in the section on costs which talks about health care and pension payments for under-60 retirees. Also some good information on using the right mix of investment accounts to optimize taxes and costs.