Being an Anthropologist

Ethnography always starts with an act of humility. They know something that you would like to know. You want them to tell you for free. They often don’t understand what you want to know, or your concerns seem utterly alien to them. Being an anthropologist must be one of the most awkward jobs in the world. You are superfluous, a supplement if you are lucky. I f you are not, your presence is obnoxious, getting in the way of things, disturbing. In Japan, the socially necessary politeness alleviates direct allusions to your status of incompetence, but however long you stay here, you will always be a marginal figure. A supplement. Sometimes vexing, sometimes interesting, sometimes even funny, but never essential to anything.That is probably why living here makes one so prone to depression. You are a foreigner and people will treat you as a guest. You’ll be kept at a distance and no matter how hard you try, you will always be marginal. You just don’t matter in the big schemes of their things. That is why it’s so easy just to stay in bed. You’ll be excused. After all, you are foreign.

Quote of the Day III

He 'd told his parents he'd quit teaching in order to pursue a career in writing, and when, more recently, his mother had pressed him for details, he'd mention the Warren Street Journal (a Monthly of the Transgressive Arts), the name of which his mother had misheard and instantly begun to trumpet to her friends Esther Root and Bea Meisner and Mary Beth Schumpert, and though Chip in his monthly phone calls had had many opportunities to disabuse her he'd instead actively fostered the misunderstanding; and here things became rather complex, not only because the Wall Street Journal was available in St. Jude and his mother had never mentioned looking for his work and failing to find it (meaning that some part of her knew perfectly well that he didn't write for the paper) but also because the author of articles like 'Creative Adultery' and 'Let Us Now Praise Scuzzy Motels' was conspiring to preserve, in his mother, precisely the kind of illusion that the Warren Street Journal was dedicated to exploding.

Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections

Tokyo Landscape VIII

Its entrance examination time at the Tôdai and everybody is nervous and offices close at odd hours and library opening hours are arbitrary, so I took refuge in the Maison Franco-Japonais in Ebisu, just one station from Shibuya. It has a very calm and spacious library with a high ceiling and a huge panorama window on Roppongi Hills (you can see it in the back on the pics).