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The story
A 32-year-old poster wrote on 5ch that a gastroscopy had found stomach cancer, prompting a stream of questions from thread regulars about the symptoms, what led to the exam, and the treatment plan.
The poster revealed the cancer was Stage 3A and would require surgery, that cancer runs in the family, and that they don’t have insurance — sparking further discussion about health checkups and diet.
What people said
Uuurgh……
Would've been nice if it were made up, huh
Found out from a gastroscopy (endoscopy)
My company checkup still only does the barium swallow test, so getting the scope done was a nice move on my part
What stage is it?
Is it pretty bad?
It's stomach cancer, right?
My stomach just kept hurting and hurting, and I kept thinking 'that's weird… that's weird…,' then my mom told me to get checked since grandpa had stomach cancer too
I don't have any insurance
I mean, people with families might, but who in their early 30s, single, and living with their parents actually has life or cancer insurance!?
I don't have pain either, but lately I've had this tight feeling around my liver area🥺
It wasn't intense pain
More like a sharp twinge, or just a general sense that something was off
Re: #31
Skip breakfast and lunch (just coffee and cigarettes)
Dinner is mom's delicious home cooking☺
Go to your health checkups
And if cancer runs in your family, take that seriously and get screened
Cancer runs in my family too
Everybody's died of cancer
My dad too
That's gotta be pretty pointless
Seriously, you're better off skipping the barium test
There are old guys with terrible diets who are still perfectly healthy
Yeah, I think so too
My dad worked at a big company and had checkups every year, but by the time they found it, it was Stage 4 and he died in no time
There's the high-cost medical care system anyway, so even with treatment it'll only run you about as much as a motorcycle
Thanks
Money should be fine — I've got savings and no kids
But if you've got kids, insurance is a must
The One Piece is cancer
Because it metastasizes through your whole body and connects it all into one (a pun on "One Piece" meaning "connected as one")
Oda seems like he lives an unhealthy lifestyle too, there's a chance he goes before you find out
The Berserk tragedy all over again (referencing Berserk's author dying before finishing the series)
I'll tell you what the One Piece really is
It's a snake big enough to wrap all the way around the earth
I tried it once and it bombed so hard, never again
Probably because you didn't make a funny enough face
Keep doing it till it actually lands
Colon cancer is basically the weakest boss of all the cancers
Getting stomach cancer without H. pylori seems pretty rare, I'd think
Company checkups don't test for H. pylori, right?
So I never got tested until my stomach started hurting
Re: #80
Just this constant sense that my stomach hurt
I didn't really notice any other changes myself
I'm already prone to feeling sluggish anyway, and my weight hasn't changed
What kind of pain is it?
Different from the stomach cramps you get from running?
Is it a sharp, stabbing pain?
If it can be done same-day I might give it a try
Lately I've had pain on the opposite side from my heart
It's same-day
Out-of-pocket cost is under 10,000 yen, isn't it?
It's 3A, so it means surgery
Background and Key Points
Cancer risk from H. pylori-linked stomach cancer in Japan is a policy-relevant issue, not just this poster’s bad luck: Japan has one of the highest gastric cancer incidence rates in the world, largely tied to historically high H. pylori infection rates, and the standard employer-mandated annual health checkup (kenshin) still defaults to a barium swallow X-ray, a decades-old screening method with lower sensitivity than endoscopy for early lesions. Japan’s national health insurance system covers most citizens, but the poster’s claim of having “no insurance” almost certainly means no supplemental cancer/life insurance policy, not no health coverage — under Japan’s universal system, treatment costs are further capped by the “high-cost medical care” (kōgaku iryōhi) subsidy that another poster references, which limits monthly out-of-pocket expenses based on income regardless of the procedure’s total cost.
The thread’s actual disagreement isn’t about the diagnosis itself but about how much stock to put in checkups at all: several posters argue that routine annual screening is effectively theater when it relies on barium testing instead of endoscopy or H. pylori testing, while others counter with a fatalistic “it’s all luck anyway” framing, citing unhealthy people who never get sick and, conversely, a case where annual checkups still missed cancer until Stage 4.
What outside readers likely miss is that H. pylori testing and eradication, now standard practice in Japan for gastric cancer prevention, is not part of the routine annual company checkup posters describe — it typically requires opting in separately or seeing a specialist, which is why the poster only got screened after already having symptoms and a family history nudging them toward it, rather than through any systematic institutional safety net.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “Cynical Me (32) Gets Stomach Cancer.”
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