Japanese doctors, hospitals and pharmacies

[Maciamo]

Pharmacies are located to near hospitals because people usually go to the hopitals first to get prescriptions from the doctors, which makes it inconvenient for someone who is used to just walk in to the pharmacies to get medicine they want.

Yes, but why not just have the pharmacy inside the hospital then ? I have been to hospitals in England, belgium and Spain and everytime there was a pharmacy inside.

Until a few years ago, practically 100% of prescription medicines were dispensed by the doctor/hospital and you got the prescription filled under the same roof where you got examined. The problem with this was that the area of which medicines to prescribe was the prime area of the national health care system that doctors could abuse to inflate their incomes. In an effort to address the problem of doctors overprescribing, the government loosened the rules and made prescriptions portable. You can get them filled at any pharmacy, so (in theory) the doctor has no financial incentive to load you up with pills and nostrums you don't need.

Hmm, funny because almost everytime I or my wife went to see a doctor in Japan (for a cold, flu or the like), we ended up with a huge list of medicines to buy, most of which were not necessary (eg. medicines for sore throat and fever when I don't have either of them, and antibiotics, which I need even less).
I guess they have some kind of arrangement with the pharmacy next door.

Many of the places in Aobadai have a pharmacy in the drugstore. Usually a seperate counter.

Well, maybe those where you live have, but among the 3 drugstore near my station, only one has a pharmacist (although only medicines without prescription), one has a lookalike pharmacist but for Kampo (漢方) only, and the last one doesn't have any medicine.