Hello,

Heading to Japan in 3 days. I planned this trip months in advance and read online that I was okay with medication without a yakkan shoumei (some obscure permission form for medication) since, according to the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Labour website, I can bring up to a "one month supply" of sleep medication, no problem.

Great, right?

Sigh... a few days ago, I read online that this was a specific amount! I had no idea until then. None. Zero. I have an American prescription for medications in a higher dose than what Japan considers "a month." Not uppers or narcotics or opiates but a sleeping pill. All in the original bottles, with the prescribing info on them. If one does the math, it's clear that it's for a month (e.g. "Take 1 pill a day, 3x per day" and that equals a month).

So I didn't know I'd need a yakkan shoumei, and now I am a limp mess about customs. It's all unclear online.

Do I cancel the whole trip? It's all not refundable, of course. I've never had anything like this come up before. Ever. I've been abroad plenty as well.

The bureaucracy online for Japan and meds is really hard to piece together and it really just says "up to a month" etc. etc. etc. so I made the assumption that I'd be okay bringing less than that, as prescribed?

Will it be okay?

It's over the limit, but not by all that much. Maybe twice the limit, which is conveniently written almost nowhere online except in Japanese. I literally noticed it only because it was mentioned on a website somewhere in English. And I was stunned. I hadn't seen it mentioned otherwise.

I just can't get a good feel for how concerned I should be. I can see that Japan is very unyielding about uppers and sudafed, narcotics and opiates, but this isn't any of these. It's not prohibited, and it's not uncommonly prescribed in Japan, just at a lower dose than in the U.S. but it is a sleeping pill and technically a controlled substance, but a really boring one. But technically I should have a yakkan shoumei, although no time now for that.

I'm not planning to go without sleep for my vacation, so that idea is out.

Tourists must do this kind of thing all the time by accident, right? Customs must be used to it?

Talk me down or else tell me I should be worried enough to cancel the trip and eat a few thousand bucks and my whole year's vacation because I don't know what to do here or what's even likely. I thought I'd researched this to death, but I never thought to check what a "one month supply" was (it's not on any English site that I have ever seen, actually, just apparently in Japanese on a .pdf that someone mentioned on a forum). I figured it was what it sounded like: medication, prescribed, for one month's time.

This is all really messing with me, so thanks for your insight about "traveling with slightly too much otherwise legal, restricted but not prohibited, medication" to Japan.

What do they even do if they stop you at customs for this kind of thing, or is that just unlikely at all? Again, from what I've read online, I cannot get a read on this situation. People either say it's very serious, to the point that I freak out, or they talk about drug smuggling oxycodone. It's not either of those situations though...

A vacation is supposed to be relaxing! Thanks for your experiences.

I'm just taking carry-on, BTW. Unsure if that even matters. And of course it's obvious the medication is for a month because the math is on the bottle, which is marked and all that stuff.