My last week in Tokyo was social.
On Monday my Swedish Berlin friend A arrived to Tokyo, and we spent some time together in the evenings this week – starting (and ending) with conveyor belt sushi for lunch. I had izakaya dinner with my Japanese Berlin friend and tandem partner D. I also picked up my bag from Shibuya-D, and he gave me a Japanese book which is relevant for my research.
On Tuesday night I had dinner with T&T, who in a way are informants but we met as friends, so I stayed off research mode. In the morning I did another batch of laundry.
I was going to have dinner with Shibuya-D on Wednesday, but since I wanted to get some shots from the top of Mori tower, and my days were running out, I sort of cancelled. Instead, a late hotel room beer with A.
On Thursday an elaborate sushi dinner with T (who invited me) and Minato-D, with inspiring discussions. Another hotel visit to A, who had lost his wallet.
On Friday I had tempura lunch with my Japanese friend M in Okachimachi and conveyor belt sushi dinner with A in Ueno.
I filmed something basically every day, using the gorillapod instead of the gimbal, it makes for another kind of shots which I also want.
And so came Saturday and the doujinshi event that was the main reason for this trip. It was sort of both a failure and a success, but mostly a failure I’m afraid. It felt like there was so much at stake that I froze. I didn’t distribute the flyers to more than those that I bought from. Maybe I’ll elaborate on why later, but the end result was that I threw away the remaining ca 200 flyers, which didn’t feel so good. But one of the mangakas I had given the flyer to came up to me and we said we would meet afterwards, but that didn’t happen. Anyway, I think we’ll be in touch about it. She would be my first serious female informant, so I’d be very interested in her perspective.
And today I flew home to Berlin! I paid the whopping 85 euro for extra legroom – last time it was 65, but I guess it’s about supply and demand and they’ll see how high they can go. I mean, how many seats have this much space – it feels like first class:
Ok, that’s it, I’m done with Japan for this time around. I might summarise this “preparatory field trip” in a separate post.
It’s so good to be home! S met me at the airport and had ordered a taxi for us.
We got a few readings for courses starting next week.
Readings
Sonic Strategies for Field Research
- Feld, Steven. 2017. “On Post-Ethnomusicology Alternatives: Acoustemology.” In Francesco Giannattasio and Giovanni Giuriati, eds., Perspectives on a 21st Century Musicology: Ethnomusicology or Transcultural Musicology? Udine: Nota, 82–98.
Filmmaking For Fieldwork
- Henley, Paul. 2004. “Putting film to work: observational cinema as practical ethnography.” In Sarah Pink, László Kürti, and Ana Isabel Afonso, eds., Working Images: visual research and representation in ethnography. London: Routledge, 109–30.
Other
Film
- Inflight: Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016, 105 min)
TV
- Disenchantment (P2 E1)
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