Mailing medicine to my brother in Japan

[GriffN]

I need to mail some prescriptions to my brother in Japan (I'm in the US) since he needs to stay 28 days longer than he originally planned. The drugs are legal in Japan, but he can't get the prescription filled at a Japanese pharmacy.

The problem I'm seeing is that normally, you'd need a Yakkan Shoumei to import more than 30 days of meds; and for a short time, my brother will be in possession of more than 30 days worth. But I won't be sending more than 30 days worth of meds! (ARGH!)

It takes ~2-3 weeks total to receive a Yakkan Shoumei, and I need to send the meds by Wednesday next week to get them to him on time.

So, if anyone has any relevant experience, it would be greatly appreciated. I've never had to send medication internationally before, so any info on that is welcome.

(I'm trying to weed through the Japanese Customs webpage, and it's been pretty unhelpful all around. Also contacted the embassy in DC, and they just referred me to the same site.)

[Jessi]

I'm sorry to say I don't have an answer to your question... and if no one else here does, I'd recommend asking over at GaijinPot since it's a pretty specific question - they have a board just for health questions and there may be someone who has faced a similar situation there. Good luck!

[GriffN]

Thanks for the referral.

[Ulver_684]

I need to mail some prescriptions to my brother in Japan (I'm in the US) since he needs to stay 28 days longer than he originally planned. The drugs are legal in Japan, but he can't get the prescription filled at a Japanese pharmacy.

The problem I'm seeing is that normally, you'd need a Yakkan Shoumei to import more than 30 days of meds; and for a short time, my brother will be in possession of more than 30 days worth. But I won't be sending more than 30 days worth of meds! (ARGH!)

It takes ~2-3 weeks total to receive a Yakkan Shoumei, and I need to send the meds by Wednesday next week to get them to him on time.

So, if anyone has any relevant experience, it would be greatly appreciated. I've never had to send medication internationally before, so any info on that is welcome.

(I'm trying to weed through the Japanese Customs webpage, and it's been pretty unhelpful all around. Also contacted the embassy in DC, and they just referred me to the same site.)

GriffinN-san!

Have you try out http://www.UPS.com?
They sent shipments to Japan and you can sent eveything you want except for alcohol there are some restrictions see below:

http://www.ups.com/media/en/terms_service_us.pdf

I sent a package to Miki-san two years ago and it contained a perfume, a T shirt, candies, etc brought at target and Macys and the two package arrive with everything I sent to her. I also call them and they told me that you can sent medicine but they'll check the box before sending the package. I'm going to sent another package to JP101 to Peter-san by the end of the year and it's going to contain Mexican stuff and they say it was ok so I recommend you try out UPS.

[GriffN]

Thanks for the link and the experience. Greatly appreciated.

[john10074]

m not the type of guy to look at my past and wish I could be back there. By and large, I'm happy where I am right now, commercial real estate despite the Minnesota Wild continuing to choke in the Stanley Cup Playoffs (something is most certainly rotten in the State of Hockey). However, I do sometimes lament the fact that today's free insurance quotes technology wasn't available to me when I had the time, ambition and friends required to have myself some good adventures. Add to this list, now, the combination of a MacBook and MacJournal 5, because the two work perfectly for the young Mac user living the type of adventure worthy of documenting.That's not to say MacJournal's not useful for everyone else, of course. I've used it quite effectively for organizing my stories and ideas for a while now, and it's become an important business card part of my writing process. For each project on which I'm working, I create a journal entry of ideas, snippets of dialogue, etc. I also have a journal of good bits that don't necessarily have a home yet, and one specifically for where I have used ideas I like. The latter is tremendously helpful for making sure I don't use the same joke credit score twice, for example, or for determining whether I can because the first use will fade into oblivion.

[Ulver_684]

Mina-san!

Does anyone one knows how much Abilify (Aripripazole Mental Medication) costs in Japan? Maybe my family will end up sending me my medication to Japan by UPS if it gets very expensive there.

[vjzn4508]

This is way too late to help the original poster, but may help someone reading now.

Japanese customs regulations (as I understand them) state that a person does not need any special permission or licence to bring in or import one month's supply of prescription medications for personal use. I interpret this to mean that you can organise a friend or family member overseas to mail you one month's supply each month. I seriously doubt that there would be any problem with a few days overlap, as long as the packages arrived approximately once a month. In fact, I've had this system set up and working okay since I left Australia to come to Japan about five months ago.

A friend puts the boxes of medication into a mail package which is sent by regular mail. The individual medication boxes are all clearly labelled by the dispensing pharmacy (as is the practice in Australia) with my name, the name of the medication, dosage, prescribing doctor and dispensing pharmacy. I also have a photocopy of the original prescription included in the mail packages for good measure. My friend who sends them to me clearly writes on the outside of the mail package: "One month supply of prescription medication for personal use only". All mail packages so far have arrived without being opened for inspection, but I cannot see why there would be any problem if they were.