Doctor’s prescription

9 comments

1. Please check out the medical resources on the [wiki!](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/wiki/medical)

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2. No

3. Provided Japan has the medication you need available and what you need is legal, you can take your prescription from your home country to a Japanese doctor, get a consultation, and hope for the best. You can’t just bring the prescription to a pharmacy and have them fill it.

   Just be prepared to visit the clinic every month. Doctors here rarely give out more than a month’s worth of medication, even in cases of long-term use like birth control or blood pressure meds.

4. Of course not. Japanese laws and regulations are different from those in another country, and some medicine is even not being sold here. You will need to go see a doctor here to get a prescription.

5. This doctor is handing out prescriptions to friends? Or this doctor has doctor friends that she advises on prescriptions? Because if the former, you should find a new doctor.

6. If your doctor has friends in the US military, that might explain the confusion.

7. You can not use it here. Not sure where you got the idea you could.

8. Other countries may be more lax but Japan is definitely on the stricter side of things. A few points – most a repeat of what’s already posted:

   * To have most prescriptions filled by a pharmacy, they need to be issued by a licensed Japanese MD or by one of the few foreign MDs with practicing privileges in Japan.

   * Most prescriptions are for a maximum of 4 weeks or 28 days; medications that have been newly-approved for Japan often come with a maximum prescription duration of only 14 days.

   * If a prescription issued in Japan isn’t presented to a pharmacy within 48 hours or 72 hours (I forget which), it “expires” and one will need the physician to re-issue or re-authorize it.

   * Prescription medications that fall in either the stimulant (ie for ADHD such as extended release methylphenidate) or opiate-like painkillers are often a pain to get prescribed. Many are not available in Japan.

   * However, medications such as anti-depressants, sedatives, tranquilizers are prescribed & dispensed with surprising laxity, and can be often gotten from simple “GP clinics” – either “naika – internal medical clinics” or the like. A clinic configured for expats such as the Tokyo Medical & Surgical Clinic is going to charge you top dollar – expats on insurance like Cigna from their employers don’t care. Even if not on Japanese NHI or its corporate equivalent yet, a regular clinic like Hiroo Honma Clinic in Hiroo will get you what you need for a lot less. (bringing a copy of your prescription from home will very likely help speed the diagnosis & approval process)

   * If taking a medication with very precise effects, do your research to make sure that even if you are receiving the same brand name medication and dosage, that it is the same formulation. One expat I know had a wife who was prescribed anti-depressant, and it took over 2 years before they realized the cause of her issues in Japan were due to the medication she was receiving being slightly different in formulation.

9. Depends on what you mean by use, what the medications are, and how often you can get back to your doctor’s country I think.

   I don’t know a lot about all the possibilities, but what worked for me for a bit was:

   1. Go to my doctor in the US, get a prescription, ideally for as much medication at a time as possible.

   2. Fill that prescription *at a US pharmacy* and get a [yunyu kakunin-sho](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/policy/health-medical/pharmaceuticals/dl/qa2.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjDs5CGt-f-AhUnLkQIHUFJB9gQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1FJH4RhEb1Rz6-XMwo3g3d) for that prescription so that I could bring it with me to Japan.

   3. (If the prescription has refills) have my family refill the prescription and send the medication to me, as described in the Yunyu kakunin-sho document. Then IF customs stops the package apply for a Yunyu kakunin-sho to get them to release it.

   4. After the refills run out get the lab work or whatever done in the US (return to step 1.)

   This only works if you visit your doctor’s country frequently enough to get the labs and stuff you need for a new prescription before you run out of the old one.

   By the way are you sure your doctor meant her friends ask her for ongoing, give to a pharmacy style prescriptions? Because I remember that when I started seeing my psychiatrist in Japan I gave them some letters from my US doctor’s basically explaining what I’d been prescribed with and why. To speed up the process of getting the same medication from the new doctor.