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
So, if I understand correctly, there is a whole "approval" process when you get SRS done in Japan…?
Yep! If you can read Japanese, the details are here.
It's partly Japan being way behind the rest of the world as usual, and partly due to a case in the 60s where a surgeon was prosecuted for performing sex reassignment on a sex worker. This violated Japan's eugenics law (fortunately repealed since then) against sterilization. (The same law required forced sterilization of disabled people, resulting in a court case which still pops up in the news from time to time). So the doctors got a bit jumpy and wrote guidelines to give themselves some legal protection.
Basically, a strict interpretation means you have to get a psychiatrist to rule out any other possible explanation before you're allowed to transition (that includes hormones, not just SRS). Up until last year, RLE was a requirement. Fortunately most specialist gender clinics here are a bit more relaxed and tend to follow WPATH, so getting started is quite easy. But to get approval for surgery you still need the mental health people involved, and despite having lived as a woman for over a year at that point (with documented proof!) they weren't convinced and wanted to start the observation period from scratch. They were kind enough (!) to cut the period down to six months, though, so I had to go into Tokyo once a month for a 30-second appointment so they could check I was still being girly enough. No, seriously: they explained at the beginning that it would be a problem if I turned up to the appointment appearing masc. At the same time I had a series of written and oral interrogations into just why I thought I wanted to be a woman, my sexual history, etc etc. At every stage they openly expressed doubt as to the truth of what I was saying. It was humiliating and exhausting, but it's done now.
Wow, that really sucks. :(
I was able to get a referral letter in Tokyo for SRS after only a few appointments, but the surgery is abroad so that might explain why it was somewhat easy: still had to tell my little life story to the psychologist, but he was never expressing doubt like in your case…
Ooh, lucky! I guess you went to a better clinic than me then :)
(I only found out afterwards that mine was a bit notorious for being stuck in the past)
Maybe the "gaijin" factor helped…