Gapnotes

Notes from the gap

Study diary

Week 38: 16-22 September 2019

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I started the week by reaching out to some of the informants that I have emailed with. I met the first informant the same (Monday) afternoon and we had drinks and early dinner at an Akihabara izakaya (Watami), followed by doujinshi browsing and shopping at Animate, Mandarake and Toranoana. We got a great connection and he didn’t mind me filming him.

On Tuesday I filmed at the Shibuya intersection and was greeted by other videographers: A Dutch film team and a young Japanese creator.

On Wednesday I had dinner with my old friend T at D’s place, with L as well.

Thursday I visited another old friend, D, after first meeting a second informant at a café in Ooizumigakuenchou.

On Friday I had dinner with my longtime Japanese friend Y and afterwards met my first informant again, this time in Ueno and equipped with the shotgun mic. We went to a karaoke establishment and recorded a proper interview, since we thought a karaoke booth would be sound proof – but it wasn’t really.

I also changed hotels on Friday, since the one for 3,300 yen (28 euro) per night was full when I wanted to extend. So now I live slightly more luxurious for 4,600 yen (37 euro) per night, still in Minamisenju, or “the Bronx” as T called it when he heard where I lived.

Small hotel room in Japan
My new luxurious hotel room.

On Saturday I met a third informant, who declined to let me use his voice in my film, but who allowed me to record him for my own memory. At Edinburgh café in Shibuya 3-choume. In the afternoon I attended a two hour guided tour of University of Tokyo. I liked the study places in the library.

Today I took a slow morning, doing laundry at the hotel.

I was not feeling great today. I think I was coming down from the high of shooting every day and meeting plenty of informants, as well as editing some short clips in the evening. Today when I arrived at Akihabara and set up the gimbal I got the feeling of repeating myself. I’ve got the cliché footage already – what’s the next step, cinematographically, and in terms of storytelling?

I started feeling better once my fourth informant confirmed that we will meet next week in Nagoya. Since a return ticket to Nagoya would cost 22,000 yen, I bought a Japan Rail Pass for only 33,000 yen which will let me travel as much as I want anywhere in Japan during one week. I’ve booked a room in Nagoya, but after that I don’t know – maybe I’ll just improvise a little vacation.

Started reading Paul Stoller’s book Sensuous Scholarship, which was recommended to us by our Theory and History lecturer.

Book

  • Stoller, Paul. 1997. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press:
    • “Prologue: The Scholar’s Body”, ix–xviii
    • (Part I: Embodied Practices)
      • “Introduction: The Way of the Body”, 3
      • Chapter 1: “The Sorcerer’s Body”, 4–23

Articles

Video

Week 37: 9-15 September 2019

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I flew to Tokyo on Tuesday and landed on Wednesday. Since then I’ve been out filming every single day – so far in Akihabara and Shinjuku. I’m still learning how to use the Ronin-SC. And which shots that are good in general. But the big hurdle is neither technical nor aesthetic, but the guts it takes to point a camera towards someone – for a much longer time than when you just take a snapshot! It was a relief to realise I came over this hurdle the moment I mounted the camera on the gimbal and got out there, among people. The job feeling takes over – you want the shot, and that’s more important than what people think about you. Even so, pointing the camera to single people rather than a crowd is hard.

Karl in Shinjuku
Shooting in Shinjuku.

I stay at a cheap (3,300 yen ≈ 28 euro per night) hotel in Minami-senju. Toilet in the hallway, public bath on the ground floor. There are only men on my floor and during the bathing times (separate for men and women). No one utters a word, but everyone is very polite. I hear the guy in the next room snore every night, but it doesn’t bother me.

It was wonderful to revisit Akihabara. In general, there are so many foreigners in Tokyo now, compared to my first trip in October 2011, when there was virtually no one in the wake of the quake.

I’ve been to two doujinshi events, a small one in Kamata yesterday and then Good Comic City 26 at Tokyo Big Sight today, with 4,750 creators selling their doujinshi. I estimate at least 95 percent of the creators and visitors were female. They had even changed the male toilet in the halls to “female only”. Lots of BL. It didn’t excite me much actually.

I sent business cards to the printers just before I left Germany. I paid extra for express delivery so that I would get them the day before I went to Japan. But UPS failed anyway. Because … Because they can? The thing is that I knew it wouldn’t work. And it didn’t. The whole thing irritates me because I should of course have printed business cards in good time before I left.

Inflight entertainment: I loved Isn’t it romantic, but Stockholm was so bad. I didn’t really like Tonde Saitama either so I only watched half of it.

Articles

Video

Film & TV

  • Stockholm (2019, 92 min)
  • Isn’t it romantic (2019, 89 min)
  • Tonde Saitama (2019, 107 min)

Week 36: 2-8 September 2019

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A tiny week of free time and preparations before heading off to Tokyo. I had dinner with A on Thursday and hosted a little get-together with the new student S and his wife N on Friday – drinks in my studio and dinner at Vietbowl. We were joined by K and S, and continued to Hops and Barley to meet R and A, and a visiting Japanese designer, H.

I published my Space and Place paper “The GPS Selfie: Embodied Mapping Practices in Veloviewer Explorer” on Researchgate and the accompanying film Tiling on Youtube:

Click here to display content from YouTube

Got very nice feedback from the users of Veloviewer Explorer, which was the subject of my research. One of my informants wrote to me:

“individuals’ use of geographical information systems (GIS) can be seen as a form of self-expression”, that is a great conclusion and valid one!

And Ben Lowe, the developer of Veloviewer, published a blog post about it and tweeted that the audio and video “capture what Exploring is about”:

Click here to display content from Twitter

It felt important to share my findings with the community immediately instead of waiting for the paper to be graded first. And I am relieved that the community felt correctly represented.

I spent some time reading the last chapters of Michael Fisch’s ethnography of the Tokyo commuter train system. I really loved this book and how it managed to convey something important through a mix of technical theory and personal stories. Man and machine. Man with machine. An innovative ethnography that apparently took many years to produce.

I submitted my thesis proposal draft on Friday, which officially closes the second semester for me. So I have now effectively studied half of this programme, and I will take a well-needed break in Tokyo for four weeks before kicking off the third semester with in-house classes in the beginning of October.

Japanese

  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • 小3 writing level 44–53

Other

Articles

Book

  • Fisch, Michael. 2018. An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network. The University of Chicago Press.
    • “Forty-Four Minutes.” Chapter 5: 166–205.
    • “Ninety Seconds.” Chapter 6: 206–59.
    • “Conclusion: Reflections on the Gap.” 260–66.

Video

Film & TV

  • Toy Story 2 (1999, 92 min)
  • Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World. S1 E1: Tokyo. (2018. God, I hate this kind of TV journalism.)
  • Futurama S2

Week 35: 26 August – 1 September 2019

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This week was all about finalising and submitting my final project for Space and Place, which is about Veloviewer Explorer.

On Tuesday I had a Zoom meeting with a second informant. I finished a rough cut of the film the same evening and sent it off to both informants for confirmation – they liked it! S watched it too and had valuable feedback on how to improve it.

On Thursday I went on a four hour Explorer tour to record some biking sounds (clipping in, spinning cassette, 8 bar tires against asphalt …). It failed miserably, as I almost only got wind sound, despite using both foam and deadcat on a shotgun mic (AT897). In the end I realised that the sound from the DJI Osmo Action is not half bad, so now I’m mostly going with actual sound, which I guess is a good thing, in a way.

I spent a lot of time perfecting the film and exchanging clips that weren’t working. I also polished the essay, which ended on 2,000 words (instructions said 1,500). The film is ten minutes (no limit, the 5-10 minutes I mentioned before was for Immersive Tech). On Friday evening I finally submitted, almost a month before deadline, and the feeling was as wonderful as always. I’m outta here!

Researching Veloviewer Explorer has made me rediscover cycling. I was out again today, in the beautiful area south of Königs Wusterhausen, to which I took the train (our student card covers trips in all Berlin, and you can bring your bike for free). Today I biked over 100 kilometers for the first time in maybe two years, so I feel very weak tonight. But satisfied. My square grew to 27 today.

Now I’ve only got one more study assignment before I’m off to Japan, which is to write an ungraded and relatively short research proposal. It feels great to finally be able to focus on my final project and its many readings.

I got another negative reply from a Japanese doujinshi shop.

I had some kind of throat inflammation this week and almost lost my voice, but today it’s coming back and the throat seems to be healing. So that’s why I skipped Critical Mass this Friday (also, I was tired from the Thursday tour). I spent Saturday reading another wonderful chapter in Michael Fisch’s book on Tokyo’s commuter train network. I love how he’s really pushing the limits for what an ethnography can look like. And I like his language, reading it is a bit like parsing code.

I’ve kept up this weekly study diary for a year now. It helps me to be structured and keeps me motivated.

Japanese

  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • 小3 writing level 40–43  repeats)
  • Two short podcasts

Other

Articles

Book chapter

  • Fisch, Michael. 2018. “Gaming the Interval.” Chapter 4: 121–165. In An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network. The University of Chicago Press.

Anime

  • Neon Genesis Evangelion, S1 E1–2 (1995)
  • Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho, E74 (1992, felt like a rewatch, I lost count of where I am)

Film & TV

  • Dressed to kill (1980, 104 min – we saw a clip from it in the Queering the Gaze seminar in the last inhouse).
  • Pixar:
    • Monsters, Inc. (2001, 92 min)
    • Toy Story (1995, 81 min)
  • Nancy Schwartzman: Roll red roll (2018, 80 min – on the Steubenville rape case and Anonymous)
  • François Cardona: Le Brésil, sous l’emprise des BBB: Bible, Bœuf, Balles (2019, 60 min – on Jair Bolsonaro and Silas Malafaia)

Week 34: 19-25 August 2019

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Tonight I finished a first draft of the visual project for Space and Place, after having done a Zoom interview this morning with an informant. I wonder if it’s ok with just one informant in the visual piece. If he’s good, why not? I don’t think it necessarily gets better if two or three people are saying variations of the same things. And it’s only a seven minute piece. (The rules were 5–10 minutes.)

S and I attended the opening and closing of the experimental film festival Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin at HKW. I met our programme director S there, and former student K. As for the films, let’s just say they were all over the spectrum. I loved Lukács’s and Broersen’s Forest on Location.

On Monday I finally did the failed bike ride that I had planned for last Sunday. And yesterday I biked to Liepnitzsee with S, our first long ride together. But 60 kilometers on the fixie was painful in the end.

Two visits to the Apple Store: I got back my Macbook Pro with a new topcase, and I got my Ipad Pro exchanged for a new one (of the older model) after I noticed a lighter spot on the screen. For once Apple Care pays off!

I had lunch with my German friend M, who has moved to Berlin.

I had coffee with a Japanese photo journalist who had contacted me and wanted advice about my programme, which he had been accepted to.

I wrote to four more Japanese shops to ask permission to film there.

Oh, and I read lots of comments and reviews slashing Enter the Anime.

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 24,600 (jōyō kanji 小1–6, reviews)
  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • 小3 writing level 41–50 (including repeats)

Other

Articles

Videos

HKW: Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin – New cinema and contemporary art

Opening screening, 20 August 2019
  • Persijn Broersen, Margit Lukacs: Forest on Location (11:42, Netherlands, 2018)
  • Laura Henno: Djo (13:00, France, 2018)
  • Soufiane Adel: La lumière tombe (9:23, France, 2018)
  • Sebastian Diaz Morales: Multiverse (10:00, Netherlands, 2018)
Performances, 20 August 2019
  • Untitled performance by Shahram Yazdani in collaboration with Broersen & Lukács (Iran, Netherlands, 10:00)
  • The Screening (2019), outdoor screening performance by Ariane Michel (France, 28:00)
Closing day, 25 August 2019
  • Sandro Aguilar: Mariphasa (Portugal, 2017, 87 min)

Film

Week 33: 12-18 August 2019

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On Monday I finalised a flyer I want to give Japanese doujinshi creators at various events in Tokyo next month. I sent it to the printers on Monday afternoon and got it delivered on Thursday morning. Very happy with the results!

I emailed the new respondents about my Veloviewer study. Unfortunately I’m not able to talk with them now since Apple has my computer since Thursday, so I’ll have to arrange the meetings next week instead.

Even so, I finished the “shitty first draft” on Friday, and it’s not that bad. My dilemma now is that I’m not sure what of these options I’ll go for:

  • 1,500 words essay and visual project
  • 3,500–4,500 words essay

My text is now 3,000 words, which means either cutting it in half and adding a visual project, or add a bit of text and submit. In a way it would feel good to be done with it and be able to focus on my final project, but on the other hand, why pass up an opportunity to create something visual?

I realised that DJI has released an action cam, so I watched a couple of reviews and ordered it. My main purpose is that I will use it for discreet shots in doujinshi shops in Tokyo, since my request to film properly at one of them was denied. The wide angle, the impressive “Rocksteady” electronic stabilisation, and more frame rate options (like the one I shoot in: 25) than what Gopro offers will make it perfect for those situations.

But I also took it for a spin on an actual Explorer trip with my road bike yesterday, just a short one, 36 km to fill a hard tile. Because of course I want to do the visual project! And it was wonderful to pump up the tires, oil the chain and wipe away the cobwebs (!) between the spokes of my Cannondale Caad 10 and be out with it again, for the first time in more than a year. What took you so long?

I wanted to do a longer trip today – a real Sunday ride – and I did start out despite heavy rain, but turned around after five minutes since it was actually terrible. Nothing is worse than having prepared fully and eaten a lot of food to go on a long ride and then staying at home.

I finished the elementary school kanji in Memrise! But still in grade 3 in Nextbook’s app – remembering how to write a kanji is much, much harder than just recognising them. In total I should now know 1,006 jouyou kanji according to Memrise – with 1,030 to go. I might know a few more than that since I’ve studied kanji from other books before, but it felt good to learn kanji the way Japanese elementary schoolers do it. I should now start practicing my reading for real.

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 54,400 (jōyō kanji, finished 小6)
  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • 小3 writing level 27–40, including many repetitions

Other

Articles

Videos

Film & TV

  • Netflix commercial: Enter the Anime (2019, 58 min: Such complete rubbish, I felt so cheated, should have taken the cue from the first cringey interview and stopped watching. Not only me: 2.7/10 on IMDb!)
  • Baki S1 E1–4 (2018. Too violent, just a lot of blood and gore but without real impact in the fighting scenes.)
  • Kengan Ashura S1 E1 (2019. I had never understood what CGI is – beyond special effects – but maybe I just hadn’t watched any? This series seems to be CGI only and I really hate it. It’s like watching a screencast from Second Life.)
  • Futurama S2

Radio