First time researchers: 第一印象　First impression

Remember when you were in elementary school and had your annual swimming classes in the nearest swimming hall? The place, where you would practice basic swimming skills and later as older student perhaps get permission from the teacher to try jumping from the platform. The place, where you would choose a bit too high of a platform, where you would stand looking down into water, feet shaking and heart pumping way too fast. Hoping that you would have paid a bit more attention to instructions and regretting that you would never had climbed so high. And everybody behind you is waiting for you to finally jump.

This was more or less what I felt like on the morning I was going to The Field for the first time. I have never liked jumping into dark waters. Or any waters, for that matter. Actually, the only time I jumped as a kid in the swimming hall was from springboard and I have never jumped since, but let’s not go into details here... Luckily this time I did it, since the waters here in Japan seem to be pretty warm, as also my dear husband has observed during his own frequent fieldtrips to nearby swimming hall. (For some reason warm water temperature everywhere here is set to mystical 42 decrees – these people have indeed read their The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)

Debris inside a house damaged by tsunami

For those who are not acquainted with my current location and work: I'm a doctoral candidate for Centre for East Asian Studies and currently studying as an exchange student in Tohoku University while simultanously doing my fieldwork for my PhD research. My research theme is reconstruction process in Yamamoto-town after the disaster of 3.11. (Edit. Here's a link to a report that touches similar issues that I'm currently working on: housing and community rebuilding.)

When meeting my supervisor here at Tohoku University for the first time, he introduced me to a graduate student, who was doing volunteer work once a month as teacher in computer circle for elderly people in Yamamoto-town. Fortunately, this kind of connection existed and I was able to join the circle after being in Sendai only for few weeks. I did manage to understand instructions when and where to meet in order to commute to Yamamoto: The route consists of either bus or train ride to the Sendai station, from where it is possible to take either direct highway bus or JRtrain - substitute bus combination, since the railway is not operating in Yamamoto due to tsunami damage. The trip to Yamamoto takes altogether around 1,5 hours, during which one has time to discuss Japanese and Finnish foods and research aims in clumsy Japanese (when travelling in company) or to practice traditional Japanese train meditation a.k.a. sleeping (when travelling alone).

Left: ocean. Picture taken standing on a seawall, "The Great Wall of Japan". Right: tsunami zone.

So, on a sunny October morning, I opened the door of our apartment, closed my eyes and jumped (metaphorically). The jump might not be as elegant as the professional divers' jumps, but nevertheless it was worth it. I stayed in Yamamoto for Saturday and Sunday, during which I met many interesting people, got a bunch of wonderful experiences ranging from welcoming lunch including local specialty harako-meshi, visit to locals’ soba-noodle workshop, tour around Yamamoto by two different contacts, all the way to live interview on the local radio station - in Japanese, of course! Talking about extreme experiences… One remarkably absurd feeling followed me through whole intensive weekend: I’m actually here, in the place that was no more than pictures and text in the computer screen only few months ago. I saw the plain costal areas that used to be villages and the place, where the rescued and cleaned photographs were kept - the original reason for me to get interested in Yamamoto in the first place. I even met some people that I had only stalked in the internet thus far. Of course, the weekend was also full of feelings of disbelief and sadness when seeing the tsunami damages - or what was left from it. All in all, I felt that this was a good beginning for my fieldwork.

Soba-workshop and its products.

The only thing about diving is that one kind of should be able to reach the surface and swim to the shore. In other words, one must either learn to swim or drown. Although the latter is an unfortunate risk for the students thrown into the deep and murky waters of ethnographic fieldwork, I decided that if my husband had learned how to swim well by practicing few months intensively in the local swimming hall, so will I in the field. Thus, the topics of my following posts (if there will be some) will practical fieldwork observations and frustrations as well as Yamamoto, a little-known small tsunami town. Yamamoto, that as a choice of case study topic creates curiosity even among the locals. Yamamoto, where apples, strawberries and Sakhalin surf clam (hokkikai) are praised local products. Yamamoto, that has luckily easy kanjis in its name: 山元!