Hey! Happy pride everyone! Who wants to know how much it costs to become a cute anime girl?
I'm coming up on two years since I started my transition, and I have SRS scheduled for just over the anniversary mark. Just for fun I tallied up everything I've spent so far on medical transition. This includes estimates for the next few months, up to and including surgery. All prices are in Japanese Yen.
| Item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| HRT (DIY) | 58,180 | Estrogen gel |
| GID diagnosis | 22,670 | Required for prescription HRT |
| HRT (prescription) | 353,280 | |
| Laser hair removal | 65,880 | 6 sessions, face |
| Name change | 800 | I'm a Japanese citizen so I had to apply to the courts here |
| Electrolysis | 1,499,080 | ~12 hrs prep for SRS and ~12 hrs face |
| SRS approval | 48,990 | Not fun |
| SRS consult | 33,860 | inc. estimates for blood work |
| SRS | 2,090,000 | PIV; Japanese hospital |
| Total | 4,172,740 |
I think I'm pretty much done with electrolysis, although I expect there will be a long tail tidying up. None of this is covered by insurance (with a long and stupid footnote I can go into another time), but it is at least tax deductible. Going forward, HRT will cost about ¥8,000 per month, reduced by 70% once I can change my legal gender and can start using insurance.
Notably this does not include:
- travel costs (substantial in my case since I live way out in the countryside)
- clothes
- cosmetics
- hitting up other girls in lesbian bars
Of course how much it costs depends a lot on what route you choose to take, so this is very much only a guideline! Let me know if you have any questions <3
Holy shit this is so expensive. I was planning on moving to Korea soon and wanted to stop wasting time and money on laser, so I was looking at doing trips to Japan for electrolysis (at least on my face. I'm fine with the progress of laser elsewhere) but that is an absurd amount of money.
I'd have thought Korea might well be cheaper than here, although I haven't checked. There are just so few places offering it and they're always fully booked so they just keep on raising the price.
As far as I can tell after some intensive web-searching, the laser is relatively inexpensive, but there are virtually no electrolysis places that I can find.
I wouldn't be so opposed to laser, but my genetics have screwed me with deeply rooted, ultra thick, dense hair, so laser is excruciating in order for it to work. Like, if it's tolerable, I see zero results. The only time it's worked is when I was in so much pain, I literally filled the little goggles they give with tears and was like dissociating on the table. Even after half a dozen sessions of that, I've got like easily 3 or 4 times more than that to go, so I'd rather just jump to electrolysis so that there's measurable progress each time at least.
That sounds miserable about the heavy-booking, though. Maybe I'll just keep my eyes open for openings and save a bit of money in the meantime. 😭