Bringing Medicines into Japan

Drugs we take for granted abroad

While on holiday in Thailand, I picked up oral contraceptive pills from a pharmacy. In Thailand, the pill is dispensed over the counter by pharmacists, but the anti-inflammatory ibuprofen is classified as a dangerous drug and kept behind the counter. Essentially the opposite is true in Japan - oral contraceptives are only dispensed by prescription, and there are any number of off-the-shelf ibuprofen preparations. When you travel in and out of Japan, or welcome friends and family from abroad, don’t take the availability of drugs for granted. What’s more, some drugs are strictly controlled or even illegal to possess in Japan even though you can legally obtain them elsewhere.

Photo Anna Shvets

What you can and can’t bring from other countries

A well-meaning friend, a paramedic from the US, offered to bring me a care package of over-the-counter medications and a first aid kid. I begged him not to - many of the items he mentioned are classified as exceeding the Japanese limit of narcotic or stimulant drugs. According to the webpage of the Consulate-General of Japan in Seattle, Tylenol Cold, Nyquil, Actifed, Sudafed, Advil Cold and Sinus, Dristan, Drixoral Sinus, Vicks Inhaler, and Lomotil are in this prohibited category. In the end, we settled on a basic first-aid kit.

I always advise my friends and family traveling to Japan to check with the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare’s information about drugs you can bring. There is a list, too, of the controlled drugs. Your visitors can bring a one-month supply of paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, antibiotics, vitamins, contact lenses and solution, statins, and blood pressure medication. Surprisingly, cosmetics are limited to only 24 items of one kind.

If the amount of drugs exceeds a one-month supply or is a medical device, your visitor will need to apply for a 輸入確認書 yunyu kakunin sho, a confirmation of importation of drugs. You can read all the details about the timeline and how to obtain the confirmation in this PDF.

Disposing of unused medication and needles

When I was cleaning out my first aid kit of expired medicines, I wondered how to dispose of it. So I looked it up on my city’s website. In most cases, you remove the packaging and dispose of it as you do with plastic garbage, and the medicine goes in the burnable garbage.

Used syringes are a huge issue in Japanese garbage disposal as workers get stuck with used needles improperly disposed of. Check with your municipal government website for clinics and hospitals that receive used needles. Some public facilities such as public toilets have boxes for sharps, too.

What over-the-counter medicines do you count on as substitutes for familiar ones from home? If you or you or your visitors applied for yunyu kakunin sho, how was the process?