Either you have been extremely lucky with your choices or you have already been psychologically conditioned to accept this bad practice. By grinding I don't necessarily mean having to backtrack for the sake of leveling up - I mean bad pacing which is "fixed" by means of combat.
JRPG's are prime offenders in this regard, not all of them, but the great majority. There's a difference between providing an acceptable level of challenge and throwing enemies that the player has no chance of defeating at him. One of the more commonly-known JRPG tropes are so-called "invisible enemies" or "random encounters", in some games you can't make two steps without running into a bunch of baddies.
This is a remnant of the olden days when video games were unable to show an excessive number of detailed sprites, today it serves no purpose other than extending the gameplay time and preparing you for possible upcoming boss battles. Running from those encounters will lead the characters to be underpowered when the time for the final encounter comes, not running from them is a massive waste of time.
This is poor pacing - the game should establish a balance between combat and exploration. Role-playing games are about playing roles - throwing enemies at the players at completely random times, especially overpowered ones is a sign of poor DM'ing in real life and bad game design in computer games. There's more to adventure than just combat while you're getting from one place to the other.
There are JRPG's which nullify this problem by introducing visible enemies or visible groups of enemies so that the player can avoid them when the purpose of entering the world map is not leveling up but exploration - this is done in "Ni No Kuni" or the "Dragon Quest" games. There are also games which introduce items that allow you to avoid battles when you do not wish to run into them, such as "Pokemon" and its "Repel", however this begs the question how well the game is actually made if it has items specifically designed to combat its own battle system.
With good pacing, a moderate number of battles should be able to prepare you for the boss you're about to encounter. This is because in a good RPG experience isn't only gained from battle, but primarily for questing and other interaction the DM deems worthy of rewarding. Moreover, a good RPG gives the player rewards not only in the form of experience but also items.
With JRPG's, especially early on, I find myself grinding outside of a town ahead of schedule either to build up my stats or my abilities or to gain enough gil for the most expensive weapon in the town's store - as a player I shouldn't be doing that, the game should offer me opportunities to gain these abilities and equipment by a variety of means.
Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg - you could write a whole essay about common JRPG problems. You might say that this is a few isolated cases, but you and I both know that's not true. In a lot of ways, this kind of structure is somewhat expected, this is what the target audience actually "likes" - I suppose it stems from the traditional "systematicness" of Asians in general. These "problems" are especially apparent in Korean MMORPG's which are more often than not completely fixated on the idea of "grinding outside of the town", or at least that's my impression.
Random encounters are crap, but some games do it properly enough that they aren't that noticeable. Typically SMT I find don't just throw dozens of random encounters at you.
It's an old mechanic and it's not even widely used anymore, most of the more dominant jRPG series have thrown out that system. So it's not a great argument to try stand on, especially since you blew it away by noting all the ways games have fixed the issue.
Your last point is kind of a joke because I could say the same thing about Neverwinter nights. There were times I just repeatedly threw myself at the same enemies in order to level up my teammies a little bit more because I needed a skill here or there.
Skyrim itself is one gigantic grind for pretty much every skill, there was no proper pacing at all for most of the skills.
It's not a problem with jRPGs, it's a problem with the genre, or more specifically the player. You don't NEED to buy every item, you don't NEED that skill, you WANT those things. If you NEED them, you're probably going to want to knock the difficulty down a notch until you can play at a more competent level. Like I said, grinding is for people to make up for a lack of skill, or to get their OCD fix. I don't NEED that next lockpicking skill, but hell, I want whats in that chest, so i'll sit there and grind for it so I can do so. That's just how RPGs work, and western RPGs don't just throw everything at you at once either.
Also just a random note but i've never played a Final Fantasy game and had a problem with money. Those games gives you fistfuls of cash if you don't blow it all on potions and phoenix downs to begin with, and considering how easy they are, you shouldn't need to. Not to mention a majority of RPGs will actually give you these items if you just continue on a little bit.
Lastly, a good RPG doesn't need to reward you with experience,
or items. I'm happy doing sidequests in some jrpgs simply for the knowledge I gain from it. Tales games reveal a lot of stuff in their sidequests. Nier had a crapton of odd jobs to do and most of the time I didn't even care what they were paying me, I just wanted to get some more info out of the game. That poor doggy
This is a very foreign concept in western RPGs. I can't even really name one that has lore sidequests. They're almost always slay x, find y, or go to z, and gain your exp pool, items and money...yay. Typically they have the depth of a spoon.
It's all just preference, it's easy to bitch about things western RPGs do too, but it's just redundant and pointless for both of us to continually go back and forth and poke at things one does better than the other.
