Therapy in Tokyo, in English

What people bring to us

Most of what we see is ordinary, in the sense that people everywhere bring it to therapy. Some of it belongs particularly to living here.

There is the loneliness of a move, which is a specific kind. You may have a full calendar and still have nobody to say the true thing to. Friendships that took twenty years to build are eight time zones away and awake at the wrong hours, and the friendships available here are new, effortful, and often conducted in a second language.

There is work. Long hours, an office culture that may run on signals you were never taught to read, and a job that was supposed to be the good part of the move.

There are relationships across cultures — where two people are not only negotiating a marriage but negotiating whose assumptions about family, money, silence and conflict get to be the default. And there is parenting across cultures: a child who is more fluent than you are in the country you brought them to, a school system you cannot fully advocate within, and the quiet worry about what your children are becoming.

There is identity. People arrive competent and find themselves illegible — unable to make a joke land, unable to be recognised as the person they were at home.

And there is anxiety, low mood, sleeplessness, grief, drinking that has crept up, old things resurfacing. The move did not cause these. It removed the supports that were holding them.

Who you would be seeing

Four clinicians work at BeyondBleu, and it matters that you can tell them apart.

Tumee Hugginson is our Clinical Director and a psychotherapist working with couples. She holds a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and is trained to Level 3 in the Gottman Method. She works in English and Japanese.

Martina Bottazzo is a Japan Certified Public Psychologist (公認心理師), Japan’s national psychology licence. She sees individual adults and young adults, works with families, and carries out psychological assessment. Her work is grounded in trauma-informed cognitive behavioural therapy alongside relational and depth-oriented perspectives, and she has particular experience with multicultural identity and the emotional texture of expatriate life. She works in English, Italian and Japanese.

Dr Lorenzo Geirola is a clinical neuropsychologist and psychotherapist, and a Registered Psychologist on the Tuscany Register in Italy. He carries out neurocognitive and psychological assessment and sees individual clients, in English and Italian.

Brandon Liu is a US-licensed psychotherapist working with couples, individuals and families, in English.

Between them, the practice works in English, Japanese and Italian.

You choose when you book. If you are not sure who would suit you, write to us and we will say honestly which of them we would suggest — including the possibility that it is none of us, if what you need sits outside what we do.

Based in Tokyo, working online across Japan

BeyondBleu began in Tokyo and Japan is still where most of our work sits. What we do not have is a consulting room in the city that you would have to get to, and that is a deliberate choice rather than something missing.

Consider who this page is actually for. Someone posted to Nagoya. Someone on a rural placement with no English-speaking clinician within two hours in any direction. Someone in Sapporo, Fukuoka or Okinawa. The clinics that appear in every “English-speaking therapists in Tokyo” list serve a few square kilometres of one city, during office hours, to people who can get there. That is a small fraction of the people who need this.

Then consider what happens next. Expatriate life is organised around moving: a transfer to Osaka, a partner’s contract ending, a posting to Singapore, a return home two years earlier than planned. With a practice you attend in person, a move ends the therapy and you start again with a stranger, usually at the moment you can least afford to. Online, it does not end. You keep the same clinician through the move, and through the one after that. For people whose lives are shaped by relocation, that continuity is worth more than a room.

And there is the ordinary week. Sessions can sit early in the morning or in the evening. You do not spend ninety minutes crossing Tokyo to protect fifty minutes of work. When you book, times are shown in your own time zone rather than ours, and your confirmation gives both.

Fees

Assessment fees include the written report. Payment is taken in Japanese yen when you book. If your card was issued outside Japan, your bank sets the conversion rate and may add its own fee, so your statement may show a slightly different figure; that difference is your bank’s and we receive no part of it.

We publish these because you are entitled to know what something costs before you have to ask for it.

Beginning

There is no referral, no assessment gate and no waiting list to be placed on. You choose the service, choose the clinician, choose a time — shown in your own time zone — and pay at booking. You will receive a confirmation carrying the session link, your local time and Japan Standard Time.

If you need to change or cancel, there is no charge 48 hours or more before the session. Inside 48 hours, half the fee applies. On the day, or if the session is missed, the full fee applies.

Book a session · Meet the clinicians · All services

Common questions

Is online therapy as good as in person?
For most of what people bring us, online work is not a lesser version of therapy. It is therapy, held over a screen. What matters is the relationship between two people, and that crosses a video call more readily than most people expect. It is not right for everything: if you are in crisis, or need psychiatric care and medication, private online psychotherapy is not the right first step, and we will tell you so rather than book you in.

Is there an office I can come to?
No. All of our work is online. It is how we are able to see people across the whole of Japan rather than the part of it that can reach a particular street by seven in the evening.

Can I be seen if I do not live in Tokyo?
Yes. We work with people across Japan and outside it. Nothing about the therapy changes.

What happens in the first session?
We ask what brought you, what has been going on and for how long, and what you would like to be different. You are not obliged to tell us everything at once. Towards the end we will say what we think we could usefully do together, roughly how often we would meet, and whether we are the right people at all.

Do you take insurance?
No. BeyondBleu is private pay. Japanese National Health Insurance covers medical consultation at a 心療内科 or 精神科 clinic; it does not cover private psychotherapy. Some international and employer policies reimburse therapy — if yours might, ask us and we will provide a receipt with whatever details your insurer requires.

What if English is not the language you want to do this in?
Therapy is available in Japanese with Martina Bottazzo or Tumee Hugginson, and in Italian with Martina Bottazzo or Dr Lorenzo Geirola. Say which you would prefer when you enquire. Some people also find it useful to work in the language a difficulty happened in, which is not always their first.

How soon can I be seen?
That depends on the clinician and the times you can manage, so rather than give you an average, we show you the real thing: the booking calendar lists every appointment currently available, in your own time zone. What you see there is what there is.

Do I need a referral?
No. You can book directly.

If you need help sooner than we can offer it, よりそいホットライン (Yorisoi Hotline) provides free, confidential support in English and other languages on 0120-279-338. In an emergency, call 119.