I Got Lazy!

I didn’t update my blog for more than three weeks! There are a few reasons. First and foremost, I got physically tired and therefore lazy. As I started going to F Elementary and Junior High Schools on a regular basis (typically I observe students from 8am to 4pm three days a week), I felt exhausted after writing up my fieldnotes for three to four hours at night. I didn’t realize that fieldwork is this demanding not only mentally but also physically--especially at its initial stage when a fieldworker has to find his way into local social relationships and organizations, setting up logistics, arrangements, and terms of ensuing fieldwork. But this is a feeble excuse....

I was encouraged by my friend who emailed me yesterday and asked why I hadn’t updated my blog for weeks. It’s good to know that there is someone who actually reads my blog! Since I have encountered several interesting episodes and patterns of cognition and emotion behind them during the first month of my fieldwork, I will try to report some of my findings from now on.

I. 2nd graders already have a concept of the Japanese and use it to explain observable attributes of a person.

One 2nd-grade boy asked me why I am able to speak Japanese. He didn’t understand why a student from America can read Chinese characters. A girl sitting next to him laughed and said to him “Because he is Japanese!” After staring at me for a couple of seconds, the boy asked me “But you are able to speak English, too... Why?” I told him that is because I have learned English.

The girl’s statement indicates that she is capable of using a concept of the Japanese as a cause to explain my being able to read Chinese characters. The boy’s cognition operates according to the same logic. That’s why he was perplexed after he was primed by the girl to foreground my being Japanese: he had difficulty understanding why I am able to speak English even though I am Japanese.

More later...!