Tsukada-sensei : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Tsukada-sensei / In Memoriam: sa_ku_ra
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示 2.1 |
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| 説明 | This pic sums up all that is cool about my mentor (in the plaid shirt and sneakers). A sweet, old-fashioned guy who played with fireworks with us. He's also a kick-ass scholar.I spent 14 months doing archival research for my dissertation in Osaka, 1999-2000. It was an intense period of my life intellectually (I don't know how many times I thought about crying, staring at early modern Japanese handwriting I couldn't decipher... then I slowly got the hang of it) and personally. Having lived most of my life in North America, this was the first time I lived in Japan for an extended period, had my own apartment and everything. Plus, this was my first extended stay in Japan as an adult. There were many other North American and other foreign students doing their studies there, but my own experience was slightly different; I think there was a separate set of expectations placed upon me, me being ethnically Japanese compared to the other foreigners... yet I was almost as lost as my non-Japanese friends at times. My sense of being different, alienation, if you will, was difficult to convey to others. I felt this acutely as a single woman in her early 30s, leading a slightly unconventional lifestyle as a doctorate student.The group of guys above were a part of the "zemi" I was affiliated with - a corps of grad students studying with my mentor, Prof. Tsukada. I met with them every week for their study groups and presentations, went out drinking with them, went on document cataloguing trips. I was definitely the odd person out for the first little while - I was one of two or three women to begin with among rather shy, old-fashioned Japanese men. For months I felt like there was going to be no way we could ever bridge this social and cultural gap I perceived. I was quite alone and depressed for the first half of my stay in Osaka for such reasons.As you can see, I was proven wrong. At some point, we all managed to mesh together and I was fully welcomed into their academic family. They knew I was different, but accepted me and appreciated me. The last few weeks before I finally left for the States, the zemi decided that they were going to throw me a BBQ in a park behind the university (if you go back to the Osaka set, you'll see more pictures). After we ate everything, we played with fireworks after dark. It was touching to me that not only they enjoyed having me there for the year, but that they were also going to miss me, and that despite all the perceived differences we found kindred spirits in each other. |
| 撮影日 | 2005-04-24 13:39:27 |
| 撮影者 | In Memoriam: sa_ku_ra , between places |
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