Chinese Herbal Medicine

Chris took me to visit his host family from several years ago today, and they're all delightful.  The oldest son is a professional acupuncturist living in China right now.  The middle son graduated from college in England with a degree in social policy, returned to Japan and joined the army as a medic, decided his calling was to become a mortician, and moved to California to study mortuary sciences.  After returning to Japan as a "corpse sanitation and reconstruction specialist", he became kind of disillusioned by the funeral industry in Japan, and so he switched jobs and now coordinates English programs in Tokyo.  Their youngest son is a gentle, kind guy Chris' age who is looking for a job at the moment and plays in a death metal band on the side.  Hilarious.  They live in a sweet house in the beautiful peninsular suburbs of Yokohama with their grandmother.

Over lunch, I casually mentioned that I was interested in learning about East Asian Medicine, and the host mother excitedly whipped out parcel upon parcel of medicine she'd recently received from the family herbalist.  I didn't ask what these are for because I thought it might be rude to so directly inquire about the family's health, but they're still fascinating!  Pictures below!

After looking at and tasting (!) the medicine, we went on a nice drive around the peninsula and got a cup of coffee at the Hayama Marina, where had a delightful discussion about the differences in approach and thinking of Eastern and Western medicine while admiring the view from the marina yacht port.  The parents told me personal stories about successes from using Eastern techniques.  They talked a lot about a chiropractic approach that was originally used to put back together Judo fighters who had dislocated joints and things.  According to them, small almost undetectable fractures in bones are thought to cause pain, but since they're so small and undetectable, Western doctors will often dismiss the pain their patients complain of.  This Eastern chiropractic-like doctor will slowly massage and kind pull traction on bones until in one swift and extremely painful move, he or she realigns the bone and immediate pain relief is experienced.  This was really interesting to me because they were not only talking about extreme joint dislocation, but also about much more minor and subtle conditions.  Fascinating!!!

 

You boil all of these in a pot for hours until they sink to the bottom and then you drink the putrid smelling (according to death metal host brother) black liquid. 

Apparently these are fossils.

 

Tree bark, leaves, burdock and ginger root.  The host brother said this looks like kitchen scraps for composting.

  

Seeds or something.  According to host mother, that cloth bag is "very Chinese" though I'm not sure what that means.

Wax egg that contains a waxy foul tasting chewy vitamin type thing.  She offered me a piece of it and I tried it!  Tasted vaguely like licorice.  Not sure what it's for, since I thought it would be rude to ask... yikes.

Dried plums.