by Cornelia Reiher

Conducting interviews in Japanese is an important part of the methodology course. That’s why I invited someone actively involved in Berlin’s Japanese foodscape to join the class once again this year. In previous years, we visited restaurants and retail shops offering Japanese food and interviewed their employees, owners, or managers. This time, however, I chose a food entrepreneur who runs a pop-up business selling Japanese ice cream in Berlin. Berlin’s Japanese food scene is dynamic, deriving much of its charm from temporary and experimental formats, such as pop-up restaurants, markets, and events, where new food trends are introduced and tested.

Although it was a long trip, Taka was kind enough to come to Freie Universität in Dahlem for the interview. The students had prepared questions. After a brief round of small talk and an explanation of the interview process, the students obtained his consent to record it. Then, they began asking questions, first in English and then in Japanese, about Taka’s background, his business, Japanese food culture, and the concept of Japanese ice cream.

We learned that Taka always wanted to introduce Japanese cuisine to Berlin. However, he realized that Japanese food in Berlin is quite expensive and not everyone can afford it. This is one of the reasons he came up with the idea of selling ice cream; it offers an affordable glimpse into Japanese food culture and Taka loves ice cream. He has documented his ice cream tastings in Berlin and Japan on his Instagram account to find his niche and unique flavor. In Berlin, he collaborates with a local sake brewery, using byproducts from sake production (sake kasu) to make his ice cream. This allows him to combine flavors and create delicious vegan ice cream, since sake kasu is high in protein. Accordingly, his favorite ice cream is sake kasu ice cream. However, he also combines it with other flavors, such as sakura.

Methodologically, we learned that it’s best to conduct interviews in the interviewees’ native language whenever possible, as they often feel more comfortable speaking it. After the interview, the students told me that they felt empowered by the positive experience of conducting a successful interview in Japanese. They now feel more confident doing it on their own. Later, the students transcribed two minutes of the interview recording to learn how much work and time is required to make informed decisions about using interviews for fieldwork in Japan for their master’s theses.

by Cornelia Reiher

As is customary, the “Berlin’s East Asian Foodscape” methodology course included a visit to a Japanese restaurant this semester. Armed with participant observation assignments, the students headed to a restaurant one Friday in June that serves sushi and Japanese home-style dishes, such as donburi.

When we arrived at the restaurant shortly before noon, a crowd had already gathered, waiting for it to open. Since reservations are not accepted, we had arrived right on time and were glad to find a table for our large group among the groups of employees and Japanese women. The waiters immediately placed cups of hot green tea, chopsticks, small bottles of soy sauce, and the menus on the table.

First, we ordered food and ate. During and after the meal, the students observed and documented how the staff communicated with customers and how the restaurant organized its workflows. They noticed the multilingual environment and observed that many of the servers spoke German, English, and Vietnamese. They also found the large number of service staff and the busy takeout service, which operated simultaneously and was quite popular, interesting.

The students took notes after the meal, and in some cases, even during and before it. Due to the large crowd at lunchtime, the table was cleared immediately after we finished eating. Seeing more guests waiting in the entrance area, we left after an hour. This experience taught us that participant observation sometimes occurs under time constraints, as observers must adapt to others‘ schedules.

A week later, we were back in the classroom. We compared and discussed our field notes and findings. Some students had used their phones to take notes, while others used notebooks and pens. The most important insight was that field notes must be rich and precise in order to produce text for a thesis or paper months later. Keeping this in mind, I sent the students off to complete their next observation task: the Ethnographic Scavenger Hunt, this time on their own. They will share their experiences in blog posts in July and August.