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
Damn girl that’s a lot… I wish you all the best!
If you don’t mind, what is the long footnote? Boiled down to a few key points, or in full I read either :) I’d wager a guess, bureaucracy, stupid hurdles and half baked laws?
Quick edit, is the footnote also why you use DIY or is it the only option for you?
Thanks! It’s not that long, and you pretty much guessed it :)
So, surprisingly, SRS is covered by the national health insurance (at certified hospitals) as a treatment for GID. But of course, it’s not that easy, and in order to book the surgery you need approval from a “gender committee”, which is an excruciating combination of waiting, and dancing to the tune of gatekeeper psychiatrists (so, what do you think of when you masturbate?)
Anyway, one of the conditions to even start the approval process is a year of hormone therapy. And, guess what? Cross-gender hormone therapy is not covered by insurance. I can get as much testosterone as I want, though! The law says that you’re not allowed to mix approved and unapproved treatments for the same condition, and so – tada! – you have to pay full price for surgery. I can’t think of any way you could ever use insurance for it, unless there was some pre-existing medical reason you couldn’t take HRT and you somehow managed to convince the committee that you still wanted to go ahead.
DIY was just at the beginning, because I had to wait several months to get my initial diagnosis, and even then the first clinic I went to only offered weekly E.V. injections, so I was crashing out by day 6 or so every week. Fortunately I’m on patches now.