It's alive!!! - and it really shouldn't be...

Okay, so I re-started trying to take Chinese herbal medicine, mainly in the vain hope that it will help with my ever ailing eczema, and also to help appease my mother who is threatening to come over to Japan and force-feed it to me if I don't do it voluntarily. Anyway, this stuff was posted over from Malaysia (using some serious international coordination: mum [London, UK] phoning aunt [KuanTan, Malaysia] who went to pick up my prescription from the doctor (whom we had failed to get hold of for the second time whilst we were visiting KuanTan HERE) and then had to post it to me [Tokyo, Japan]. Fun. eh? MMMmmMmmMMmmm

Anyhooo, it's been sitting in the apartment for a while, on the account of me stopping the herbal medicine ingestion on account of 1. the lack of time to boil the stuff whilst doing my experiments, 2. the negative effects it seemed to be having on my poor little stomach - which seemed to be under undue stress at the time, and 3. It really doesn't taste that nice. I've gone through the whole week drinking one pack, twice in one day, every other day, and tonight, in a very uncharacteristic show of forward planning, i picked out a bag of medicine to boil for tomorrow morning and pour the contents into the nabe pot to boil; only to find that dust comes out of the bag (usually the stuff looks like a bunch of dried twigs). This is NOT a good sign.

There are definitely holes in the big 'herb' (I bet you its just garden compost material) which resembles a sheet of yellow card in a kind of pear shape. The holes aren't meant to be there, and the dust now looks suspicously like the left-over munchings of BUGS!!!! OooOOoOOoh.

One bag i pulled out was particularly affected by this holy disease, and I didn't have to look hard to see some very happy larvae, who looked suspiciously well-fed.

MMmMMmmmmmm. tasty!

Three bags of the stuff (+ the unwanted guests) are now in the bin. And I'm awaiting further inspection of the other bags before I decide whether or not to throw them out too.

Chinese Herbal Medicine 漢方

I had asked a Chinese friend for some advice on getting Chinese herbal medicine in Tokyo a while ago and he had, very kindly, researched me a little list of clinics practicing this alternative form of medicine who spoke Chinese (a bit easier to for me to handle than in Japanese).

He recommended going to one in Omori [大森] not too far outside the Yamanote line [山手線] on the south west end of Tokyo. Mainly because he was under the impression that they spoke Chinese and most importantly, they accepted National Health Insurance - which gives a hefty discount if you have a low income (including students) so you only need to pay 30% of the full consultation fee. It also gave a discount on most of the items that they prescribe; be it western treatments or herbal remedies. This is quite unusual, as the Japanese Government don't really seem to recognise as a valid form of treatment and thus does not usually qualify for government subsidy. Anyway, this clinic does, so that's good. Apparently, the use of Chinese Herbal medicine is on the rise, here it's known as kanpo [漢方　かんぽう].

If you are a new patient you have to attend on a certain day of the week (not the weekend, but the clinic is open on Saturdays for returning patients) presumably so that you get seen by a particular doctor. The doctor that I saw did speak a little Chinese, but his English was significantly better. He'd apparently studied in China for 6 months.

It was a bit of a trial to fill out the questionnaire that I was given at the reception, on the account that it was in Japanese, but the receptionist said that what I couldn't fill out the doctor would confirm with me later. Basically it was full of questions about your bodily functions, your digestive system, sleeping habits, general temperament, how your body reacts to food and so on. He also did the whole poking of my stomach thing and tapping of my belly to see if I were hollow. After the interview we were told to wait outside while he composed the list of herbs he thought I should have.

The consultation cost 1020yen, and I requested to have the medicine in herb form, the other choice being powder form - which is quicker to prepare, but apparently less potent. The prescription was obtained from a very conveniently placed dispensing pharmacy around the corner, which appeared to deal in only herbal remedies. We watched the guy pull out all the drawers that contained the things I was meant to have, then measure out the amounts and pour them into a long oblong tray thing, and then pull a lever. This was apparently to split the herbs into equal portions. I had enough for 14 days, one pack a day, to be taken in the morning and evening after a meal. The medicine was already put into stewing bags... just like huge, compost filled, teabags, much better than the stuff I used to get from Malaysia which involved a lot more direct ingestion of the herbs than I really liked. It cost me less than 2000yen...which I think is pretty cheap, as I'm pretty sure that mum paid a lot more than that for me when we used to go to the famous Chinese Doctor in China Town, London all those years ago when I was a kid.

The overgrown teabag and the boiling medicine

The medicine was a lot yellower than the stuff I'm used to, and definitely more bitter, eurgh!

Chinese Doctor, Kuan Tan

In the midst of our hardcore shopping mission today we managed to pop over to the Chinese doctors. Last time I was here, it was over 5 years ago... my aunt took me here on my mothers orders and she translated my epidemiological issues to the old man sitting behind a big wooden desk in a cold, dark walled room, covered with photos of University degrees and framed certificates. He asks vague questions about what is wrong with me externally and takes my pulse...while he's chatting away to my mum, my eyes gaze around the room. I notice a small TV monitor on his desk. I can see my brother and aunt on the screen, showing them waiting in the shop... looking at various 'wonder cures' which adorn the shop.

After taking my pulse, he takes a up a pen sitting at the front of his desk, held up-right in it's pen rest, dips it into one ink well, then the other. He pauses momentarily, with the pen poised above the white and red-lined prescription paper. With a flourish of his hand stroke, he writes my prescription. Each stroke is beautifully written, with the pen held just like we were taught in calligraphy class at Chinese school. Each stroke was perfectly and expertly placed. When he'd finished, it looked like a work of art.

He'd prescribed me enough for 4 days, while they concoct the rest of my prescription. Instead of the usual bag of herbs (it looks like organised compost material) that I take away and boil for hours, they now give me a concentrated liquid dosage and some weird plastic capsules... which is much less hassle that the method I'm used to.

We come out of the consultancy room, to find my aunt and brother looking at some weird 'cure-all' miracle thing, some kind of fungus which infects caterpillars which usually burrow into the ground to metamorphise...But the fungus kills them and uses the energy from breaking down said caterpillar to help it to grow. So, in then end you get some fungus which has filled the space of a caterpillar that it killed and some shoot growing where the head would have been... Lovely! Anyway, it cures everything and makes you live longer. Poor little caterpillar.