Going to Japan felt like living in the future. I could walk into any glasses store, and for $50 or less buy a pair of frames and lenses. If I didn't know my prescription, included in the price was an automated eye exam machine which'd figure it out in 2 or 3 minutes.
You can do the same in the US, zennioptical.com. You need to measure your PD which is very easy (Most optometry shops are hesitant to tell you your PD. And it's normally measured when you go to order the glasses, not as part of the initial eye exam.)
As for needing a prescription <1 year old, if your vision hasn't changed, just edit the date in the PDF. Same for contact lens prescriptions.
As part of the regular eye exam, they generally use an autorefractor machine on your current glasses and/or eyes to get a baseline before they manually fine tune with the 1/2 on the eye chart test. But yeah, you can't just get the quick prescription from the autorefractor like you talked about in Japan.
While we are in the minority, Zenni and many online optical shops recently decided they will not make you glasses if your prescription is over a certain power. In 2025 I broke $800 on frames+lenses and contacts.
You can't do the same in the US. They won't do an eye exam for you. That's the whole problem - glasses in the US are a medical device gated by a doctor, which is absurd.
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