After 5 days in hospital, Richie and I came home. Giving birth in a foreign country, you have to abide by their rules. We were given a birth certificate by the hospital of which one side was filled by the hospital and the other was supposed to be filled by us and submitted in the city-office. My hubby went to the city-office with our passports, alien registration cards, mother-child handbook and of course the birth certificate. Our baby was registered and an alien registration card was issued to him. Also the city-office gave a official birth-certificate which will be a proof of Richie’s birth in Japan for years to come. An official copy of the birth certificate costs around 300-400 yen.
Now my dear hubby was smart. He thought of finishing all the official work on one day. He had National Health Insurance(NHI), so he entered our baby's name on to the insurance card. He also applied for "marufuku," which is free medical care for infants. That is a very wonderful service in Japan. You can go to any hospital and if you have the card, you can get free treatment for your child till he goes to elementary school
He also applied for the hospital child birth expenses (around 350,000-380,000 yen) which I had already mentioned in my post “Pregnancy and childbirth in Japan - What to expect”. There is also a child benefit programme . The Japanese government pays 10000 yen per month for the monthly expenses of the baby. You can do all this in one go. Remember to take all the documents with you. More about passport and visa in the next post.
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Hi, First of all congratulation for having a new born baby :) Glad to hear that everything is ok eventhough you're at foreign country.
ReplyDeleteIt's so nice to have such government-supporting program for infants :) Good for you to take the advantages - at least you can spend $$$ on other things.