As it turns out, being a researcher is a lot harder than they make it sound.
While today was not a complete failure, I didn't really get what I wanted to out of it. I started out this morning ready to go down to the local City College and find someone at the Department of Human Rights that spoke English. Yes, I do speak Japanese, but I am nowhere near the level of being able to understand field-specific vocabulary from sociology or complex issues such as discrimination. I don't even know the Japanese word for discrimination. The point is, I was concerned that even if I could ask the right questions in Japanese, receiving an answer in Japanese might obscure the useful information, because I could miss a word or not understand a sentence.
My first mishap today came from Japan's map confusion. What I mean is this: unlike in the United States, not all maps in Japan are oriented along a N-S line. This is really convenient when you are looking at a "You are here" map and it is oriented in the direction you are facing, but not so convenient when, because of the positioning of the map of the university campus, you in fact search for an hour on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. That was me today. When I finally found the place, I had to wait another hour for the only professor who was coming to his office today to come back (thank God he spoke English). During this hour I sat outside and read. It was the first time I had a chance to read, despite all the train travel. For the first time in my life, I'm more enthusiastic about sitting and watching the scenery go by than reading. Which is a good sign, as I have pretty much devoted my career to this country, I had better find it interesting.
When he finally got there, Noguchi-sensei was far from as helpful as I had hoped. This was how most of our exchanges went:
Noguchi-sensei: So what is it you want to learn here?
Me: I want to learn <insert specific question>
Noguchi-sensei: That's very interesting.
The man gave me literally no information about the subject I came to talk to him about. It was almost as if I wasn't worth his time. Perhaps he disliked speaking in English. Maybe he just doesn't like teaching. Either way the only things he did in my time there was to refer me to other sources, most of them books. He did let me go to their small library with really cool bookshelves.
hint: it's cool because they roll back and forth
Too bad for me all the interesting data that he showed me, which was an impressive collection of statistics about public opinion on Burakumin and other social issues from all over Japan, was all in Japanese. And not the kind I could read. There are 50,000 kanji (chinese characters) in Japanese. I have been studying kanji for less than three years (we didn't start right away with kanji). I know nowhere near enough to be able to read academic studies. So those were pretty useless. I did find four interesting books in English, however, but those I could probably have found in Cornell's library as well, and that was not why I came to Japan. All in all, Noguchi-sensei was pretty disappointing.
He did give me one lead that I am thankful for. He told me the location of another research institute in Osaka that gives out an English newsletter, only it was halfway across town and it was already almost 2 o'clock by the time I finished getting no useful information whatsoever out of Noguchi-sensei. So by the time I got over there, and then searched and searched because his directions were wrong, everyone was going home for the night.
At least I found the place. I will return there next business week when things resume at the center.
I needed a pick-me-up at this point, and it was starting to look like it might rain (it later did). I went across town to the Namba area and went to a place I had heard about. It's called the American Village, and it's a place where young Osakans go and experience a mythologized "America". It has a number of stores with American clothes, and the teens walk around in their American fashions.
...sort of.
There were also a number of fashions typical of Japan, like the maid-style seen above or brightly colored wigs. Or brightly colored hair. There were also gothic styles and teens with multiple piercings in their faces. It was a colorful view of Japan that I haven't had the chance to see yet. Also, among the shops was one of "gangster" style, which was run by a few black men. I think their story might be an interesting one. They probably get just as many looks as I do, if not more, when they aren't working. I'm not being racist, I'm just saying that Japan is not the most racially diverse part of the world. More pictures here.
Tomorrow I'm up bright and early to go to Tokyo!
Cory
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