Battling for air amongst all the other tourists, I tried to look at things a bit differently (or to shoot from the hip and not look at all).
Returning to the images a few weeks later, these are my unexpected photos of Asakusa’s Sensō-ji and Nakamise-dori.
When I first went to Japan I had no concept of where I was geographically other than “somewhere to the left of Tokyo”.
When I went to Japan the second time, I had no concept of where I was geographically other than being slightly savvy with the metro map.
After going to Japan for a third time I decided to plot the places I had been on a map. See the full interactive version here: http://npugh.co.uk/jmap
Walk to work: but very slowly and without getting out of turn.
A week or two ago I posted an incomplete post about invigilator: Tokyo.
Well, I’m back in the UK now and sorting through all my documentation from the trip to Japan.
I’ve uploaded a few images to Flickr. There’s a slideshow here, but the pages on Flickr include captions giving more detail about each image.
but I was a bit wary about taking too many photos during the invigilation. I think it’s just a little bit too intimidating for a project that’s so much about how people react to subtleties within a space.
So, as an experiment with alternative forms of documentation, here’s a sound recording we made of the invigilation:
Saturday:
Decamp to Asakusa with large amounts of rucksack. Encounters at the coin laundry.
Sunday:
Spent a few hours in the morning wandering around the (very) local temple. Slightly-strange-but-nice moment when a school girl very politely asks me how I pronounce my name and then gives me some origami thankyous. Is this homework?
A very enjoyable afternoon was spent talking with a friend and being watched intently by her 7-month old.
On returning to Asakusa I found the nearly-deserted temple grounds to be much, much more preferable to the hulabaloo of the morning.
Monday:
Yamanote day 1. Met the artist I’m collaborating with, got ourselves up to speed and then I somehow manged to feel my way through buying a voice recoder in Akihabara. 1 hour circuit of the Yamanote Line making recordings.
Much sushi goodness and catching up with a friend for evening entertainment
Tuesday:
A day in the office. Not much to tell except the average time taken for a train to travel between stations on the Yamanote line is about 1min 20sec.
Over to Koiwa in the evening for a jam-packed launch party for Dislocate.
Food with a friend whilst we talk about the trials and tribulations of figuring out how to be an artist after graduation.
Wednesday:
A few more laps of the beloved Yamanote; Orichan brought along some amazing pictures to use in later stages of the project; a great few hours spent at Kandada.
In the evening I had to move over to the Suginami area of Tokyo - more lumping of large rucksack on busy commuter trains. As I left Asakusa I was stopped by someone from a TV station making a programme about increasing levels of foreign tourists in Japan. Yet again I’m asked “what Japanese food do you like?” Infinitely less satisfying than the encounter when I was asked how I pronounce my name on Sunday.
Thursday:
Serious preparations (including a nap) for the Invigilation that evening.
A long day but very interesting.
Friday:
Coin Laundry and then the Ginza space for the Dislocate event.
Fantastic soba meal in the evening.
Saturday and Sunday:
Commuting to Yokohama for the Dislocate conference. Very interesting group of artists with a nice mix of people/work that were familiar and new. Various walking activites that involved being tracked by GPS, using my heart rate to control a game and having my galvanic skin response monitored.
Gyoza and laughs on Sunday night.
Monday:
It was thundering outside but I’ve now been in a manga internet cafe place for nearly an hour now and I’m blissfully unaware of anything happening outside my 1.5 by 2 metre cubicle besides the insipid guitar moods musak and the occaisional tapping of keyboards. I need to find some street maps to draw on and then go over to Ginza for the launch party of the exhibition Linda and Meg have been working hard towards.
Time seems to be running out fast: only Tuesday and Wednesday left to go before that train ride out to Narita…
