Sunday, June 01, 2003
Another day dominated by calls,emails, and visits to guesthouses. I thought I had finally found a place yesterday which was really nice as well as cheap, but since I didn't give a deposit, they gave it to someone else who came last night after I did. I visited 2 more today, one shown by a Czech guy, and the other by a Greek. The latter place was ok--small, but had closet,tv, and drawers in the room. People seemed friendly so I think I wouldn't get isolated. On the other hand, I worry about the possible noise and smoke level. It seems harder to get ingrained into a culture if you don't smoke or drink it seems.
While hunting down a Citibank ATM in Ikebukuro, I also spent some time looking through the big stores there. I found a Heidi Store there--yes the cartoon version was made in Japan and not Mexico, France or Switzerland! Fun quote in Japanglish:
On a picnic box--Let's take the lunch to your post! It's turn into your powerful energy. Being depressed won't get you anywhere. Chain up and cheer up!
I browsed through an interesting book called Inscrutable Japanese that I really wished I had read before coming to Japan. It helped put the whole homestay incident into perspective. For example, it explained how Japanese often use a go-between to express their displeasure and use ambiguity to maintain smooth relations rather than use direct confrontation the way Americans would. It also said Japanese automatically apologize and think Americans try to make too many excuses--in this respect I probably made things worse. Based on J-mom's comments, I think I also bumped into gender expectations since she had expected me to be more "lady-like". Apparently her son is messy and makes her worry whereas her daughter is always neat, polite, and cheerful. At one point she said I would have trouble finding a husband since I couldn't cook but I laughed and readily agreed with her. Random customs she pointed out--they always close the door to the bathroom here and when removing shoes, put them facing the door rather than facing the inside of the house. I will miss this place...
It is a little ironic that I'm supposed to be focused on technology when I'm one of the few people in the class that is not equipped with a laptop,digital camera and cell phone. My own lack of a keitai made my various meetings with people difficult since I am so often getting lost or running late. So far, most of my observations have been on the train from a far which is not very useful since I can't tell what people are doing. One of the few screens I saw up close was a businessman who I was standing next to who was just playing Tetris.
I went to the Keitei research group on Friday and got a lot out of it. It was in a different prefecture so naturally I ran into a little bit of hassle with estimating train time. I was running almost an hour late, but the girl behind me on the bus spoke perfect English and was a student at the university. When I explained the meeting I was going to, she mentioned one of her good friends was doing research on mobile phones. She tried calling on her keitai, but since there was no answer, she emailed her on the phone. I was amazed at her dexterity. Using the 10 numbers which are matched to both western letters and all three Japanese writing systems, as well as the upper controls, she typed away very quickly. Luckily her friend called back and was indeed part of the group still having its meeting. Taro, the guy I had contacted, came out to meet me.
The research group is funded by DoCoMo, the main cell phone provider here, which is really interested in how young people use their technology. This money paid for the research center, more of a traditional Japanese wooden structure I think, though lofty with a lot of natural light. Not exactly what you'd expect from a high-tech building. Everyone took their shoes off so we were all sitting around a table in our socks as the students talked with their professors, on sabbatical in Los Angeles, via speakerphone. I was not the only visitor--a Finnish researcher was also sitting in on the meeting and gave a presentation on some of the research his group did. Everyone had laptops--Taro had the only Mac, a Titanium. One group was focusing on differences between how high school and college students use their picture phones. Their findings from interviews so far was that high school students tended to lend their phones out more and have pictures taken by someone else in their collection.
The most helpful part of the meeting was when Mimi, one of the professors addressed the Finnish guy and me directly in English. She said most of the research done had been more business/market centered rather than user-centered. She is trained as an anthropologist and started her technology work in the past decade with online community research. She and her colleagues are working on editing and translating a book called Sociology of Mobile Phones since much of the published work is only available in Japanese. According to her, mobile e-mail is nothing new since the pager culture dates back 10 years. She mentioned the progression of this generation who had used pagers in middle school, mobile phones in high school and mobile internet in college. When I mentioned my project, she said that the topic had been "surveyed to death" but that there had not been a lot of observational work. The Finnish guy had been travelling around Japan to talk to different research groups and promised to email me with some of his resources.
After the meeting, Taro, the bus girl's friend, and another guy drove the Finnish guy and me to the train station. The car had a screen next to the steering wheel which apparently had a navigation system to create a map of our route. I pulled out my camera to take a picture, but the girl pulled out her keitai and took it first and emailed it to me then and there. I asked Taro how many cell phones he has had--10! He replaces it at least once a year since he likes to have the current technology. DoCoMo encourages this since you can trade in your old phone to get a new phone at a discount.
While hunting down a Citibank ATM in Ikebukuro, I also spent some time looking through the big stores there. I found a Heidi Store there--yes the cartoon version was made in Japan and not Mexico, France or Switzerland! Fun quote in Japanglish:
On a picnic box--Let's take the lunch to your post! It's turn into your powerful energy. Being depressed won't get you anywhere. Chain up and cheer up!
I browsed through an interesting book called Inscrutable Japanese that I really wished I had read before coming to Japan. It helped put the whole homestay incident into perspective. For example, it explained how Japanese often use a go-between to express their displeasure and use ambiguity to maintain smooth relations rather than use direct confrontation the way Americans would. It also said Japanese automatically apologize and think Americans try to make too many excuses--in this respect I probably made things worse. Based on J-mom's comments, I think I also bumped into gender expectations since she had expected me to be more "lady-like". Apparently her son is messy and makes her worry whereas her daughter is always neat, polite, and cheerful. At one point she said I would have trouble finding a husband since I couldn't cook but I laughed and readily agreed with her. Random customs she pointed out--they always close the door to the bathroom here and when removing shoes, put them facing the door rather than facing the inside of the house. I will miss this place...
It is a little ironic that I'm supposed to be focused on technology when I'm one of the few people in the class that is not equipped with a laptop,digital camera and cell phone. My own lack of a keitai made my various meetings with people difficult since I am so often getting lost or running late. So far, most of my observations have been on the train from a far which is not very useful since I can't tell what people are doing. One of the few screens I saw up close was a businessman who I was standing next to who was just playing Tetris.
I went to the Keitei research group on Friday and got a lot out of it. It was in a different prefecture so naturally I ran into a little bit of hassle with estimating train time. I was running almost an hour late, but the girl behind me on the bus spoke perfect English and was a student at the university. When I explained the meeting I was going to, she mentioned one of her good friends was doing research on mobile phones. She tried calling on her keitai, but since there was no answer, she emailed her on the phone. I was amazed at her dexterity. Using the 10 numbers which are matched to both western letters and all three Japanese writing systems, as well as the upper controls, she typed away very quickly. Luckily her friend called back and was indeed part of the group still having its meeting. Taro, the guy I had contacted, came out to meet me.
The research group is funded by DoCoMo, the main cell phone provider here, which is really interested in how young people use their technology. This money paid for the research center, more of a traditional Japanese wooden structure I think, though lofty with a lot of natural light. Not exactly what you'd expect from a high-tech building. Everyone took their shoes off so we were all sitting around a table in our socks as the students talked with their professors, on sabbatical in Los Angeles, via speakerphone. I was not the only visitor--a Finnish researcher was also sitting in on the meeting and gave a presentation on some of the research his group did. Everyone had laptops--Taro had the only Mac, a Titanium. One group was focusing on differences between how high school and college students use their picture phones. Their findings from interviews so far was that high school students tended to lend their phones out more and have pictures taken by someone else in their collection.
The most helpful part of the meeting was when Mimi, one of the professors addressed the Finnish guy and me directly in English. She said most of the research done had been more business/market centered rather than user-centered. She is trained as an anthropologist and started her technology work in the past decade with online community research. She and her colleagues are working on editing and translating a book called Sociology of Mobile Phones since much of the published work is only available in Japanese. According to her, mobile e-mail is nothing new since the pager culture dates back 10 years. She mentioned the progression of this generation who had used pagers in middle school, mobile phones in high school and mobile internet in college. When I mentioned my project, she said that the topic had been "surveyed to death" but that there had not been a lot of observational work. The Finnish guy had been travelling around Japan to talk to different research groups and promised to email me with some of his resources.
After the meeting, Taro, the bus girl's friend, and another guy drove the Finnish guy and me to the train station. The car had a screen next to the steering wheel which apparently had a navigation system to create a map of our route. I pulled out my camera to take a picture, but the girl pulled out her keitai and took it first and emailed it to me then and there. I asked Taro how many cell phones he has had--10! He replaces it at least once a year since he likes to have the current technology. DoCoMo encourages this since you can trade in your old phone to get a new phone at a discount.
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