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Week 40: 30 September – 6 October 2019

October 6, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

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:

Seat with extra legroom

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)

Filed Under: Study diary

About Karl Andersson

Karl Andersson is attending the MA Visual and Media Anthropology programme at Freie Universität Berlin. He has a background in journalism and is currently researching Japanese subcultures. 日本語で話せます!

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