Takahashi Yukari, DDS

My husband and I have been going to Dr Takahashi over 8 years. She and her staffs are wonderful. My husband had experienced bad service at a different dentist before, but Dr Takahashi never tried to sell unnecesary treatment or products. Billing is accurate. We trust Dr Takahashi and will plan to keep going there.

Our entire family has been very satisfied with this dental service. As a bilingual family, our initial attraction was the Japanese ability of the staff. However we have stayed with them for the past 6 years for a number of reasons.
First, all dentists who work there follow the simple policy of fair, direct, and consistent communication. They communicate the advantages and disadvantages of treatment regimens, and allow the patient to decide.
Second, they attempt to maximize the patient’s usage of allocated insurance expenditures. This means that you get the most out of your insurance dollar.
Third, they never charged me for my sometimes lack of punctuality with appointments. Thank you!
What else do you want from a dentist? For us, the practice is FINE!

This dentist basically caters for Japanese clients who are not necessarily conversant in English so that it sort of gives them some piece of mind knowing that they can express their concerns in their native language.
The main concern and gripe that we have had is about their honesty with the charges. They will certainly want to (or insist on) take care of less serious matters like minor cavities over a more serious one. For example, my wife had some minor cavities that didn’t hurt at all, for which Dr. Takahashi insisted on taking care of first although my wife was also in pain and in need of root canal and crown at the same time. After our much insistence, she finally «agreed» to take care of the crown, and asked us to go see an endodontist to get the root canal done. She basically doesn’t seem to care about her patient’s concerns.
When we received the payment overview and review from Delta Dental, Dr. Takahashi’s claim amounts were consistently way over what Delta agreed to pay. So, basically what all these amount to is that comes time the patients need to take care of more serious, hence expensive treatment, their dental insurance’s maximum allowance is reached and the patients need to start paying out of their own pockets and pay for Dr. Takahashi’s «retail prices» which are probably much higher than what other dentists would charge.
In addition, the appointments are very very difficult to make for any treatment. And, my wife was even told to come back 1 and half month later for the crown treatment. (after continuously calling them back to find out any cancellation, they finally moved up her appointment to something reasonable.)
The only reason, my wife wanted to go see this dentist was since she’s not very conversant in English and felt a bit more comfortable knowing that she could communicate in Japanese.
I consider that Dr. Takahashi is a doctor who basically takes advantage of someone like my wife and many other who are relatively new in this county and who are not very familiar with how the insurance coverage works in this country.
Oh, BTW, Dr. Takahashi owns and operates Aqua dental clinic and that is where she practices. So, this review applies to Aqua Dental Clinic as well.