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.
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.