Yesterday I spent a few hours in a park near Tokyo Midtown – a shopping and office complex in Roppongi. Me and my friend noticed that there are guards who sometimes walk around. Otherwise it was like every other park. I had been there before, during the Roppongi Art Night events, when the park was filled with balloons with light. …
Social capital for moving in space
Today I’ve been contemplating two types of social capital I “own”, which I normally don’t reflect upon: white body and EU passport. What is in common between them? They facilitate certain movement in space and produce certain expectations in others. And, of course, I’ve been contemplating this in relation to my research about migration.
It takes ten minutes to become a bar hostess in Tokyo
Yesterday I did a rather exciting journalistic experiment. Without many plans on my mind, I went to Kinshicho, an area known for its bars and clubs with foreign hostesses and a lot of foreigners in general. I visited this area once with B., as recommended by Y.
Tent village in Yoyogi – another side of Japan
There are 43 people in the village, but some years ago there were as many as 400. Some have been living here for a few months only, but some are true veterans – one has been around for good 20 years, and over there lives ‘ojiisan’ (‘grandpa’), who has been staying in the park for as many as 50 years. …