#8000: The After-Hours Pediatric Line

#8000 Japan pediatric is the short-dial number parents call when a child's sudden fever or vomiting arrives after clinic hours.¹² It connects the caller to nurses working with pediatrician backup, who help decide whether the situation warrants an emergency visit or can wait for a morning clinic.²³

Confirm current details with official sources

Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). This article is general information, not medical advice; for your child's specific condition, consult a licensed physician.

Overview

#8000 (小児救急電話相談, shōni kyūkyū denwa sōdan, "pediatric emergency telephone consultation") is a telephone consultation service for parents and caregivers worried about a child's sudden illness or injury at night or on holidays.¹² It has run nationwide since July 5, 2010, and all 47 prefectures now cover hours past midnight.¹

The line exists for the uncertain middle of the night: the child is clearly unwell, the regular clinic is closed, and the parent cannot tell whether this is an emergency-room matter or a wait-until-morning one.² Advice over the phone narrows that uncertainty, but the final decision always rests with the family.³⁴

Who this line is for

The line serves parents and caregivers of young children who face sudden symptoms at night or on holidays.¹² Osaka describes the intended moment as wondering whether to visit a hospital at night or how to handle the situation at home.²

Tokyo frames the same service as a child health consultation room answered by nurses and public health nurses, with a pediatrician responding as needed.³ No nationality or insurance-status screening is documented on any fetched source, so the practical entry condition is concern about a child's condition, not paperwork.¹²³

What #8000 Is and Is Not

#8000 is a triage step, not a clinic visit and not an ambulance dispatch. Understanding that boundary prevents the most common disappointment with the service.²³

Triage advice, not diagnosis or treatment

Nurses respond with pediatrician backup, and the service is telephone advice only.² It cannot perform examinations or other medical acts, and general childcare consultations are out of scope.²

Tokyo states the point explicitly: even when a pediatrician responds, the physician does not make a diagnosis over the phone.³ Treat the call as structured input to your own decision, not as a verdict.

Expect guidance categories, not a diagnosis over the phone

The responder advises on urgency and next steps, such as seeking night care or monitoring until morning. If you call expecting a named diagnosis or a prescription decision, you will leave unsatisfied.²³

How it differs from an after-hours clinic visit

The phone line helps decide whether to seek care and how to handle the wait; the clinic visit is the separate step where examination happens.²³ Osaka's most-requested consultation topic is information about seeing a doctor, which confirms the line's role as a pre-visit decision aid.² (as of 2026-05-27; confirm current figures with Osaka Prefecture)²

When to Call #8000

Call when the regular clinic is closed, the child is unwell, and you cannot judge urgency on your own. The line is busiest precisely in that evening window, so calling earlier in the episode usually beats calling later.²

Typical night and holiday situations parents call about

Fever dominates the caseload. In Osaka in fiscal 2025, the line handled 64,793 consultations, and fever accounted for 29.7 percent, the largest single category (as of 2026-05-27; confirm current figures with Osaka Prefecture).²

The classic #8000 case is fever or vomiting at night that looks below emergency level but feels too serious to leave until morning. That pattern matches the line's stated purpose of resolving whether a hospital visit is needed now.²

For orientation before or after the call, the Japan Pediatric Society's ONLINE-QQ site offers symptom-specific decision aids covering fever, vomiting, cough, diarrhea, and other childhood symptoms for children aged one month to six years.⁴ It complements the phone line and does not replace it.⁴

When to call 119 instead

Cases that are clearly emergencies go to 119, not #8000.² If the child has trouble breathing, is unconscious or unresponsive, convulses without stopping, or suffers major trauma, skip the consultation step and call an ambulance.

Tokyo lists #7119 and the Tokyo Fire Department emergency consultation center as the parallel channel for general uncertainty about whether to call an ambulance or visit a hospital.³ That channel covers all ages, while #8000 is the child-specific line.²³

How a Call Works

The call follows a fixed sequence. Knowing it in advance keeps a stressful call short and gets the nurse the facts that matter first.²

The chart above reflects Osaka's published flow, where the announcement, the identity questions, and the confirmation restatement are all documented; prefectural details vary, so confirm current figures with the prefecture of residence.²

What happens step by step

Dial #8000 from a push-line fixed phone or a mobile phone, or use the prefecture fallback number from dial lines and IP phones (as of 2026-05-22; confirm current figures with the MHLW).¹ A recorded announcement explains the scope: the line thinks through current worries together with the caller and cannot diagnose or treat.²

After connection, the responder asks for the child's age and sex and the municipality of residence, then takes the symptom account.² Responders may restate the worry to confirm understanding before advising, and calls are recorded for accuracy and service improvement.²

What to have ready before calling

Have three facts ready before dialing: the child's age, sex, and municipality of residence.² Then describe symptoms in time order: when they started, how they changed, and what the child looks like right now.²

No insurance credential or medical record is documented as a precondition for the call itself.²³ Keep the phone charged and stay near the child so you can answer follow-up questions without leaving the room.

Hours, Coverage, and Language

The short code is a nationwide concept with prefecture-level variation. Hours, fallback numbers, and congestion patterns all differ by prefecture, so the MHLW table row for the prefecture of residence is the authoritative reference.¹

Night and holiday hours by prefecture

The national program runs in all 47 prefectures with coverage past midnight (as of 2026-05-22; confirm current figures with the MHLW).¹ The modal pattern is weekday evenings from around 18:00 or 19:00 through 08:00 the next morning, with wider daytime coverage on weekends and holidays.¹

Tokyo covers 18:00 to 08:00 the next morning on weekday nights excluding holidays and year-end, and 08:00 to 08:00 the next morning on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, and year-end (as of 2026-06-19; confirm current figures with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government).³ Osaka covers 19:00 to 08:00 the next morning, 365 days (as of 2026-05-27).²

Outliers exist at both ends (as of 2026-05-22).¹ Ibaraki, Saitama, Shizuoka, Kagawa, and Tottori run 24 hours year-round, while Kochi runs a short evening window of 20:00 to 01:00 the next morning.¹ Check the home prefecture row before a sick night arrives rather than assuming the modal pattern applies.

Save the fallback number alongside the short code

Push-line and mobile callers reach #8000 directly, but dial-line and IP-phone callers need the ordinary number. Tokyo lists 03-5285-8898 and Osaka lists 06-6765-3650 for those lines.²³ Osaka callers in the 0736, 0743, and 075 area codes must use the fallback even from mobiles.²

Japanese-default language reality

None of the fetched #8000 pages documents non-Japanese phone support, so plan on a Japanese-language call.¹²³ Tokyo's web-page machine translation applies to the website text, not to the telephone line itself.³

Foreign parents should arrange a workaround before the need arises. Options include a Japanese-speaking helper on speakerphone, a daytime call to the municipal health center on weekdays, and the pediatric society's translated self-check pages where available.³⁴ None of these is a sourced guarantee of multilingual triage, so treat them as preparation rather than a promise.

Cost and Who Can Call

Consultation itself is free, and call charges are borne by the caller (as of 2026-05-27; confirm current figures with Osaka Prefecture).² No eligibility screening by nationality or insurance status is documented; concern about a child's illness or injury is the stated entry condition.¹²³

Item	Amount	As of	Notes
Consultation fee	Free	2026-05-272	Advice only, no examination
Call charge	Caller burden	2026-05-272	Mobile and fixed-line tolls apply

The table above carries the currency signal for every row; the prose note covers the table as a whole (as of 2026-05-27; confirm current figures with the consulting prefecture).²

The After-Hours Pediatric Clinic Referral

When the nurse judges that the child should be seen that night, the line points toward night or holiday in-person care. That destination is typically a municipality-run after-hours pediatric clinic or another night-care institution the nurse names, not a second phone service.²

What the referral clinic handles

The referral covers the middle band: fever or vomiting that is not emergency level but cannot wait for the morning clinic.² Consultations about seeing a doctor are the line's most-requested category, which is exactly this bridge function.²

Osaka City's fire department app illustrates the same bridge in software form: it judges urgency and maps nearby institutions in Osaka, with one-touch dialing to #7119 and 119 alongside hospital search.² Detailed reception windows and admission thresholds at any specific night clinic live on that institution's own page, not on the #8000 pages.¹²³

What to bring if referred

Travel light but complete. The #8000 pages publish no bring-list of their own, so confirm the referred institution's page for its specific instructions before leaving.¹²³

Osaka notes the 19:00 to 22:00 window is especially congested (as of 2026-05-27).² Calling before traveling still helps, since the nurse's urgency read shapes which door to knock on first.

#8000 vs 119 vs 7119

Three numbers cover three situations. Mixing them up costs time on the worst nights, so fix the mapping now.²³

In words: #8000 is the child-specific night consultation line, 119 takes clearly urgent cases, and #7119 with the fire-department consultation center handles general ambulance-or-hospital uncertainty.²³ Tokyo runs #7119 around the clock year-round with an online emergency-visit guide alongside it (as of 2026-06-19).³

Good to know

Confirm your prefecture hours before a sick night arrives

The modal evening pattern does not hold everywhere.¹ A 24-hour prefecture and Kochi's 20:00 to 01:00 window sit at opposite ends of the same national table (as of 2026-05-22; confirm current figures with the MHLW).¹ Save the home prefecture row and its fallback number in the phone now.

#8000 gives triage categories, not a diagnosis

Both Osaka and Tokyo state the line cannot diagnose or treat, and Osaka redirects general parenting questions to a separate channel.²³ Call with the question of what to do next, not with the expectation of a named illness.

Language support is thin outside Japanese

No multilingual phone support is documented on the fetched pages, so a foreign parent calling alone in English may hit a wall.¹²³ Lining up a helper, an interpreter app, or a daytime health-center contact in advance costs little and pays off on a bad night.³

A referral is not a reservation

The line advises whether to seek care, while reception, triage, and admission decisions happen at the institution.² Evening congestion means even a prompt call can end in a wait, with Osaka flagging 19:00 to 22:00 as the peak (as of 2026-05-27).²

See also

• 7119: Japan's Non-Emergency Medical Consultation Line
• Calling 119: When and How
• What to Bring to the ER
• Clinic vs. Hospital: The Two-Tier System
• Finding an English-Speaking Provider
• Emergency Hospital Tiers in Japan

References

Footnotes

1. 厚生労働省 (MHLW). 「子ども医療電話相談事業（#8000）について」. Implementation table current as of 2026-05-22; nationwide since 2010-07-05; all 47 prefectures cover past midnight. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/newpage_55223.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. 大阪府 (Osaka Prefecture). 「小児救急電話相談（#8000）について」. Updated 2026-05-27. https://www.pref.osaka.lg.jp/o100030/iryo/syouni-qq/syouni_qq_tel.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰ ↩⁴¹ ↩⁴² ↩⁴³ ↩⁴⁴ ↩⁴⁵ ↩⁴⁶ ↩⁴⁷ ↩⁴⁸ ↩⁴⁹

3. 東京都福祉局 (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Social Welfare). 「子供の健康相談室（小児救急相談）」. Updated 2026-06-19. https://www.fukushi.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/kodomo/sodan/k_soudan.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵

4. 公益社団法人日本小児科学会 (Japan Pediatric Society). 「こどもの救急 (ONLINE-QQ)」. Supervised by the MHLW research group and the Japan Pediatric Society. http://kodomo-qq.jp/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴