I have a fridge! Finally I was able to buy perishables :) Found the sweetest brand of milk. Yeah, so it is like, 4% milk, but the logo is so awesome…I had to buy it.
It`s Monday and I have the most painful knot in my neck/left shoulder area. I want to post more today but it will be in small bits as I am kind of uncomfortable. For now…enjoy the milk.
Many of you know that I like to name my computing devices after breakfast foods. My new mobile which I posted about here (or probably just a scroll down the page if your clicking finger needs a break) has spent the first few weeks of its new life as a John Doe. This is unacceptable, especially considering that it, out of all my precious ones, has the most obvious name coming.
From today, the official name of my mobile is……………orange juice. Or “oj” for short but I`m debating whether I want to do that. I like saying “juice” too much.
So orange juice can now feel at home with waffles, syrup, and the memory of pancakes, who is still in Vancouver and has possibly been exorcised from the body it was living in (by that I mean the PC was possibly reformatted…but the memory continues).
My story telling has been a little crappy lately. I get tired out from all this information absorbing and when it comes time to summarize, my brain is mush. But for archival purposes, and for your reading pleasure, I need to try harder.
So, I can`t remember last week too well. There was the field work and that was really exhausting (again because there is so much thinking to do), but good. On Saturday I decided to see this artpiece by Makoto Ishiwata, Vacuum Packing!: Heartbeat. I suggest checking out this link for the details and the concept behind the work. Basically, you put on a protective mask and climb inside this structure. The artist takes your pulse and a beat to the same time plays from speakers surrounding the structure. You are given a button to press. Once to the start the work and possibly again if you PANIC!
In Vacuum Packing!, the air is sucked from inside the structure and the membrane surrounding it starts to close in on you. The space inside gets smaller and smaller and you feel pressure from all sides. All you hear is sucking and the loud beat.
It was a really incredible experience. Scary at first, but very comforting inside. My biggest fear was that the membrane would pop like a balloon but that didn`t happen. Then Atsu, a friend from work who also came to see the piece, tried it and a piece of the membrane (or skin ??) did pop! It was quiet surprising but he was okay so that is good. Definitely a fun time. Ishiwata-san had an initial version of Vacuum Packing! that used a coffin/closet form for the structure. Here are some pictures of that.
After seeing the piece, I went to the Shimokitazawa area in Tokyo. I read that it was a popular area for artists and young people and that it was. Though there were not as many art supply stores as I would have hoped for. Still…pretty cool. It was similar to Commercial Drive in Vancouver, but bigger, more adhoc, and with more stores and people. There were also many more vintage stores and good ones too! Clothing was organized and much of it looked unused. I guess maybe some people prefer that soapy used feel…but I don`t like it when you finally find an awesome jacket and then you find the huge stain on the elbow. My final purchase: a belt. Yay! And I was lucky too…went to some non-vintage stores as well and tried some belts. Haha…yeah the Large size might fit but they do not stock them. I also found a Lush store but I didn`t go inside!! I can`t believe myself. The logic I used at the time was, “oh, that`s not new”…but now I am wishing I would have gone in to compare products and prices and possibly get some maaaahbar. Oh well.
Other highlights…I can`t think of so many right now. I spent Sunday at a 100￥ shop (there`s this awesome one near my apartment) and at home cleaning. Yesterday I was in Yokohama for some fieldwork. Most of my time was spent in Yokohama station and the surrounding shopping centres (which are also in the station as far as I can tell) but I also wandered the streets around the station a little too. My next step today is to analyze some of my observations from yesterday so I won`t get into them now.
I will end here with my next purchasing goal: a Nintendo DS Lite. I found an application for Japanese-English dictionary. Terrific! But very impossible to find (the DS Lite)…they get sold so quickly here. It will be quite the quest.
…but I tried to deal with it in a calm manner. This morning I went on a bus adventure. To get to work I can either take a bus the whole way, or take a train almost the whole way and a short bus ride for the rest. The downsides of the train+bus route is a) the train requires 1 transfer, sometimes 2, b) it is more expensive, and c) it takes longer. The downside of the bus option is that there are only 3 buses I can catch in the morning, and 3 I can catch in the evening. I`m such a “I`ll leave when I leave” person that I often take the train+bus. The only frustration with this is that there are 3 buses that I can take from the station to work. Two of them take me all the way and 1 only part way. The rest of the way is a short walk up a hill. This latter bus comes more often than the other 2 (that would take me all the way to work) so I often use it and walk the extra bit.
This morning I took the train and on the way to the station my knee started acting up so I didn`t want to walk that last distance uphill. I waited for a number 4 or 6 because these are the two buses that I can remember going to NTT. I took the 4 but basically, it was going in the opposite direction of work. I couldn`t tell at first though because I am horrible at recognizing streets and determine direction here. I should really buy a compass…seriously. Luckily the bus only took me as far as the station before the one I just got off at. So I got back onto the train and redid the whole bus thing…turns out that there is 4 that leaves from stop 1 and 4 that leaves from stop 2…I had the wrong stop.
As a result I came to work an hour after I thought I would. What`s the point of this though? Oh…that the train system is great. I love it! Buses are a little more confusing though. They have numbers, but people refer to them by their destination names. It takes a while to catch onto the names and the kanji and even then…I am used to thinking of buses in terms of numbers.
I guess I have not yet written about experiences on my first day of field work. There was a lot of information and many questions to deal with. I have been using most of my energy to process the data into usable work notes, not write about it here. What I will write about are my negative thoughts on the “success” of my work and whether or not it will translate into good research and design ideas. I just had a revelation that pulled me from these negative thoughts - yay!
On Friday I made note of some advice for myself: 1) get out of my head and end the analyzing, 2) be patient and watch. I felt that I was missing out on interesting social patterns in the public. If I could just sit in one spot for a very long time and pay close attention to everything, some remarkable and translatable insights would eventually surface.
But I was just reading this paper, “The Limits of Ethnography: Combining Social Sciences for CSCW” (Shapiro, D., 1994) and something was totally clarified for me (I don`t know if this was from the paper or from my processed version of it). Basically, I was expecting to have things jump out at me, things “so common yet weird that they are weirder”. Most of the observations I made seemed sloppy and obtuse. I was worried that everything I observed would be biased by all the “strange things from Japan” websites I looked at before I came here. “Oh look…bikes don`t get stolen…and there is another girl in a maid costume”. I mean, of course, these things are interesting…but are they what I went out for?
What I should be looking for generally is how people construct social order. This is not found only by searching for the weird and different, even though they can make for some interesting stories and pictures, but also in considering the mundane and everyday.
What I didn`t really get was how I can also look at myself as a reflection of the everyday. We are all continuously observing and analyzing social order so that we can determine how we should act in particular settings, mostly with the intentions of “looking good” to someone or everyone. How do I behave in train stations and department stores as a reaction to my interpretation of the social environment? When am I uncertain over how I should act? What does this reveal about the social order?
I have to be careful here because I risk jumping back into my head and relating everything to myself. But I think I was wrong before, when I thought that I would have to completely lose my identity to be aware of interesting things going on. How I construct my identity is a key source for observations on how *things* happen *here* (intentional vagueness in that last part).
I was just thinking about the right to time. Not the right to have a quantity of time, but the right of knowledge of time. Everything runs on a clock, things are time obsessed. Time is such a useful piece of information. What time is it…
In what instances are people deprived of the right to know what time it is?
Well paint me glowing and give me a halo because I just sweated the devil out of myself on the way to work. The temperature is weird outside. Muggy, about to rain, warmer, but also windy so chilly in some places. You think you are cold but suddenly you are on the bus and your shirt is stuck to you.
Today is my first day of observation work. I hope the weather is nicer to me as I will be spending a lot of time outside taking pictures and notes. I will go to Akihabara this afternoon and work until maybe 8 or 9pm.
To mark the beginning of my adventures, I bought a new Moleskine for note taking. It is the squared reporter`s notebook style so it flips open from bottom to top instead of right to left. I think it`s just the sexiest thing.
I am excited for this work, but also nervous. As an observer, I need to turn down the volume of the me, me, me voice in my head. This is not about analyzing and relating and generalizing, but just about observing. It must also be away from myself, my ego, my perceptions. It is difficult to forget about yourself but I have been practicing. I find the best way to practice is to pretend I have just awoken from a coma and have no recollection of who I am, nor the drive to distinguish myself as an individual and search for who I am. I spend the time just watching.
I am not going to say bored because I don`t feel bored with my work of course :) …but I am reading and reading and reading and I feel saturated at the moment. My eyes are glossing over, getting watery. I am sighing every 5 minutes. I need a break, need something light but I don`t know what yet. I guess I could take a walk somewhere. I was trying to play Cat`s Cradle by myself but I don`t know if that is possible. So I tried to invent a new form of looped string manipulation but it is pretty hard. It`s time that I learn the protocols for distracting people from their work. I think people need distractions (preferably non-Internet ones) every few hours, whether related to other work or not. *YAWN* ok my eyes are glossing over writing this so it`s obviously not an effective use of my time. Later-
UPDATE: I am excited again and I want this guy`s job. (After this one of course).
A little about my workplace. It is a big rectangular building on a hill. There are maybe, 10 floors? I can`t remember exactly. On my floor, the hallways are very nondescript. Grey / white floors and walls. Few signs or colours. But they are wide hallways and they stretch on for a very long time. My new game is to see how long I can walk with my eyes close. It seems to be a reflex to open them, to see how far I have walked or how much I`ve angled off from my intended straight line. Maybe by next winter I will be able to walk to the end without opening my eyes. This is practice for sleepwalking.
(Related back to my own self of course.)
The other day I read this chapter from Geography and Technology by Matthew Zook, Martin Dodge, Yuko Aoyama, and Anthony Townsend: “New Digital Geographies: Information, Communication, and Place”. They talk about the initial utopian vision of the Internet as seamless and uniform connectivity all over the world - something surpassing space and geography. In reality how people connect and what they connect for has been dependent on financial and cultural factors. Differences in accessibility and use among countries, cities, neighborhoods, and people has created a form of digital geography which is very interesting to study.
I recommend reading the chapter…right now I am going to continue talking about myself as I always do. I read this and something struck me. Here I have access to the same content online that I did when I was in Vancouver. Content that is produced mostly in various parts of the US or Europe…far from Vancouver. But now that I am here, I feel so far away from it. I feel like besides having travelled far, shifted days, changed time zones, and become an alien, I`ve also entered another info-sphere. What mattered and what was interesting to me before has changed. It`s not that I am getting my content from Japanese sites because I cannot read the majority of them, it`s more like…
…it is like when you are at a party and you`ve been sitting at this one spot on a couch for a long long time. Overall, you are enjoying the going-ons around you and the conversation, but you are starting to nod off from the sitting and the alcohol consumed. You decide that it`s time to move around. You get up and walk to the kitchen where people are laughing. You missed the joke so, still standing, you focus your attention back to the area around the couch you were sitting on, this time with a different perspective. Party geography would be interesting to study.
We just had the SL start up party (for the lab that I work in). It was an in-the-building affair so now I`m back at my desk to write some thoughts before going home. I am a little pooped. Anyway, tradition is that the freshmen introduce themselves and do a little “performance”. I`m not technically a freshman but I am new so my colleagues encouraged me to prepare a short introduction - maybe in Japanese. After some drinks and food it was time for the intros. The freshmen looked all neat in a row with their black suits, black shoes and crisp white shirts. I was wearing a white shirts and jeans and shoes with a hole in the toe…how saskatchewan of me. They went through their performances. Pretty entertaining. There was a one-arm pushup-er, a whistler, some harmonica, plate stacking, a scary amount of flexibility, and some others. I was last so I had plenty of time to build up a sweat and shake. Man I was nervous. So I went through my lines (Yoko helped me write them the day before and I do know what they mean…not just memorized!)…very very very shaky. My face was burning. Yesterday I presented my work to some people and I actually felt quite confident. I guess it`s a lot easier in your own language. I still feel shaky and breathless. The reception was good though - for that I am very happy. I think they were impressed that I actually tried and even more impressed that I was relatively successful. Yay! It`s more encouragement to continue studying the language.
Now I am going home for an early sleep. Early? It`s 7:37pm and I am still here but so is everyone else so you just feel like continuing your work. Although I`m not really working right now am I? Anyway, I am curious about what I might dream tonight. The dreams have been weird lately - morphs of here and there (Canada being there) and last night I had a dream that I believe is a reoccurring one. Do you want to hear it?
(Yes.)
(Cut to dream sequence.)
I have to go to the washroom really really badly. I`ve had to go for a while. I am walking around in some neighborhood with few houses and I am trying to find an inviting one. I pick one and am invited inside by a few men. Only one speaks some broken English. They are of an indigenous tribe somewhere in the southwestern states. I think my mind actually took them from a few X-files episodes. I ask them if I can use their washroom. They say yes but it is a small journey away. I am given a pair of tall brown cowboy boots to wear. They are old and soft. They direct me to a hole in the wall, only large enough for me to get on my stomach and squeeze myself through. I do that and feel quite claustrophobic but finally I am through and in a crawl space under a house. I can see a line of light at the other end. I crawl towards that. When I get closer to the other end, I can see a white structure through the opening. There are stairs leading up an outhouse. Success! But before I can use it, my dream cuts to a movie trailer where I am a Keanu Reeves-esque action character. I fight crime using my incredible ability to squeeze through small spaces. I`m also all deep because I received the powers through an encounter with a mysterious desert shaman. I have a good theme song.
Then the dream ended, I woke up and went to the washroom.
For the most part of today I forgot that it was Wednesday. I think I was still living with (the majority of you) in Canada time. I am tired because it was a presentation day and I`m always really tired on presentation days. It is because of powerpoint. I stare at those blocks for hours and hours and they haunt me and then I leave the practicing until the morning of. Since I am still procrastinating in small 5 minutes intervals the morning of I know I have to wake up uber early if I`m going to get at least a full run of the presentation in. So yes - my main point is that I am sleepy. I am sleepy and my throat hurts (again). Excited though - we have another lab party tonight and I will enjoy it because I have no more presentation tomorrow! Well…a small one. I have a 5 line self introduction in Japanese tomorrow night hehe.
So these lab parties are much fun. Both so far have been in the same restaurant, the second time we were in a Japanese style section (no shoes and sitting on the floor). Because we were larger groups, the food and drinks were set. We were brought dishes one by one, there was a small table with a selection of liqueurs and spirits, and there was a cooler stocked full of beer outside the room.
I love the way beer is done here - if I can say that. They are large (maybe 1 litre?) bottles and you use smaller glasses. You pour for your “elders”…hmm…can`t remember how to say that…and your glass is small but never empty. It`s funny because I am new here, and younger, and a woman so technically I should be pouring beer but people have been pouring mine maybe because the parties were partly welcome parties. I am wondering when I should try pouring for someone. Maybe tonight!
ADDED LATER: Oh yeah, totally forgot. The whole reason I started writing was to say that I think people should get head massages every day. Not just get, but all people deserve them. I was rubbing my sore throat and neck and I wish that someone could give me a head massage right now.
It is 5:47pm and I am at work finishing up a presentation for tomorrow. I just felt something shake the back of my chair and I turned around to see if someone did that to get my attention. Weird…nobody there but my colleagues were looking at me. “Did you feel that? That was an earthquake”. It was really really interesting. To feel something so subtle that`s being caused by something so massive.
For those of you who don`t travel to my flickr account often, I will repost this picture:
Do you remember Barbapapa?!! So, maybe some of you don`t because Barbapapa is a series (or family) of characters in children`s books originally from France (I think). I read the books in a French immersion elementary school. Maybe 6 or 7 years ago (god that seems long ago) I was at my friend Julian`s place and saw that he had a Barbapapa book. I freaked and he, seeing my excitement, gave the book to me. It was from his childhood so I didn`t think that Barbapapa was around anymore…but in Japan it is! I don`t know about everywhere…but I found the above in the LIVIN grocery store. Now I have a Barbapapa keychain - yay!
Besides buying my mobile, not too many exciting things happened over the weekend. I was feeling a little sick from Thursday to Saturday so, even though I was much better, I decided to lay low on Sunday.
I have 4 work parties to attend this week so I need my energy. I spent the day learning how to use my new rice cooker. It`s sad…it actually took me 3 attempts to make something that you could pass off as good rice but the effort was well worth it.
I also knitted for a long time. I am practicing and soon I will knit something practical…maybe a scarf. But actually, I like knitting for the sake of knitting, not for the end product. It is very meditative. One of my ideas was to buy a ball of yarn at each new place I explore in Japan then knit it into a panel. In the end I could sew the panels together and have an adventure blanket. Maybe??
So yeah, yesterday I did indeed get domestic on my little home. Much laundry was done and even though I am fortunate enough to have a dryer, I can`t say it is the boldest of dryers so I am still hanging a lot of my things. There was something I liked about seeing my clothes hanging to dry and I feel the same thing when I see other balconies all dressed up. It`s like a sense of accomplishment, of movement and life.
OK there will be more interesting things told in the next few days. I`ve been nesting so I am in a canadian living circa `77 mood. Don`t mind me.
UPDATE: To add to that, it is 4:15pm and I have the most intense craving for cheddar cheese and grape koolaid.
