by Galina Khoikhina and Ivan Kaira

The special thing about the course „Methods and Research Techniques in Japanese Studies“ is that not only do we learn the theoretical basis of what types of research there are, but we also have the opportunity to try out the freshly gained knowledge in practice. One of the assignments we had recently was conducting an online interview with students from Seikei University. The theme was „Food Habits of Japanese People“.

During the week that we were preparing for the interview, we were constantly discussing the upcoming study with our groupmates. Even those who already had previous interview experience were a little bit nervous, but we were nevertheless excited about it. To prepare for the interview we have read a lot and learned what types of interviews exist. However, applying all of this knowledge immediately into practice was not so simple. Unexpected answers led to unexpected changes in the questions and of course, we had to improvise a bit. We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Seikei University: they were very patient, and friendly and explained all of their answers in great detail.

What’s interesting is that when we later exchanged impressions about our experiences within our study group we identified several similar experiences. First, even though we all prepared the questions separately, we asked pretty similar questions. For example, questions dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic, modern food trends among Japanese students or intergenerational tendencies. In addition, many students noted that some interesting topics were suggested by the interviewees themselves. And last but not least, we were all surprised that in terms of the Japanese language, everything seemed to go surprisingly smoothly (at least it seemed that way to us).

Among the other lessons, we have learned from our online interviews was the necessity to print out the prepared questions despite the temptation to have them solely on the screen. This may also help taking notes and to change questions on the spot. As for the note-taking itself, we have discovered that it did require some practice and, due to the absence of such for most of our group, it was quite challenging to simultaneously concentrate on both writing and actively listening to the interviewees. It was also tremendously helpful to learn that we always have to use several backup plans in case our communication or recording devices wouldn’t work or simply due to our internet connection being unstable. Fortunately – thanks to Professor Reiher – we talked about this prior to conducting our interviews, which prevents inconvenient situations.

On that note, we would like to thank first and foremost Professor Reiher from Freie Universität Berlin for bestowing us with such an opportunity and Professor Kawamura from Seikei University for connecting us with the students as well as the students themselves for helping us to gain experience in conducting the interviews in a very friendly atmosphere. We also cherished their reviews of our interviews: they motivated us to keep exploring interviews as a method full of opportunities. All in all, considering the growing popularity of online interviews, it was an extremely valuable experience that will surely be useful to us in the future.

This year’s course participants
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

by Kanna Takaoka

Thank you for making this online interview session possible. I was very happy to take part in the project. My interviewer was Leonie; she speaks Japanese so well that I did not have any trouble with communication. And she talks with such a pretty smile! In our online meeting, we first introduced ourselves for a few minutes, talking about our major, hobbies and so on. This initial conversation helped me to relax.

Then we started the interview session. We talked about Japanese food and diet. Leonie asked me some questions: what I eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, how often I cook or eat outside, how much I spend on food and so on. Two things in the interview left a strong impression on me. First is Leonie’s admiration of Japanese convenient stores. She said that there are no such stores in Germany. I cannot imagine the world without convenient stores; I live alone and must prepare my meals by myself, but I do not always have enough time for cooking. Second, her question: what do you think about Japanese food in foreign countries? I mentioned California rolls and pointed out that they are quite different from Japanese sushi. Leonie, however, told me that the most popular sushi in Germany is California-type sushi.

At the end of the session, I asked Leonie what kind of German food she would recommend to me. She recommended pretzels, Kinder Bueno chocolate, and HARIBO. She also told me that Germans often drink black coffee. Again, I had such a great time talking with Leonie. I hope that my comments would be useful for her research. I am looking forward to the next chance to exchange our cultures. Thank you very much!

Students from Seikei University who participated in our online interview exercise
Copyright © Yoko Kawamura 2022

by Cornelia Reiher

The summer term just started in Berlin and the method course on Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes is back. This year we are meeting in person for the first time after two years of online teaching and online interviewing. Ten MA students will design and carry out their own research projects about Japanese food in Berlin experimenting with different methods and filming the research process. Students already formed three groups. One group will focus on Japanese sweets in Berlin. Another group investigates Japanese liquor and izakaya. The third group will study food labels. This includes the question of how Japanese food and drink are labeled in terms of “organic”, “vegan” or “halal”. As usual, we start our course with joint interview practice by inviting guests and a field trip to a Japanese restaurant before students do fieldwork for their own projects.

We also continue the cooperation with Seikei University we started last year. Yoko Kawamura’s students will meet online with our students for their very first interview experience. FU students will ask students from Japan about their eating habits, experiences with foreign food in Japan and with Japanese food abroad. For the first time, we will collaborate with the University of Vienna this season. Hanno Jentzsch is also teaching a method course in Vienna and his students – inspired by our project – investigate Japanese food in Vienna. Students will meet online and discuss their projects, give feedback to each other and exchange experiences with fieldwork in the Japanese foodscapes of both cities. This enables interesting comparisons, I believe, and I am very much looking forward to this new perspective.

Es ist bereits 5 Jahre her, dass der Blog zur Forschungswerkstatt „Japanische Küche in Berlin“ an der Japanologie der FU-Berlin im Oktober 2016 online ging. Seitdem sind nicht nur viele spannende Projekte entstanden, die sich mit japanischer Küche und sozialwissenschaftlichen Methoden in der Japanforschung beschäftigen, sondern auch viele Hindernisse überwunden worden. Dazu gehört vor allem die Corona-Pandemie, die seit März 2020 nicht nur für Studierende und Lehrende, sondern auch für die Berliner Gastronom*innen und Mitarbeiter*innen japanischer Restaurants eine besonders große Herausforderung darstellte.

In der Forschungswerkstatt führen Studierende der Japanologie seit 2015 eigene Projekte zur japanischen Gastronomie in Berlin durch, die seit 2016 in diesem Blog dokumentiert werden.

Exkursion in eine Izakaya in Berlin Mitte 2017 (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2017)

Exkursion in ein japanisches Nudelrestaurant 2018 (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2018)

Neben Exkursionen und ersten Interviewerfahrungen ermöglichte die Forschungswerkstatt den Berliner Studierenden auch die Vernetzung mit Studierenden anderer Universitäten. Von 2016 bis 2017 kooperierten wir mit der Japanologie der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU) und luden Studierende und Lehrende der HHU am 23. Juni 2017 zum Workshop „Gender, Migration and Food: Woman in Japanese Foodscapes in Berlin and Düsseldorf“ nach Berlin ein. Im Zentrum des Workshops stand die Frage, welche Rolle Gender und Geschlechterverhältnisse in der japanischen Gastronomie in Berlin und Düsseldorf spielen. Die Studierenden konnten ihre eigenen Ergebnisse präsentieren und mit internationalen Wissenschaftler*innen diskutieren.

Workshop „Gender, Migration and Food: Woman in Japanese Foodscapes in Berlin and Düsseldorf“ 2017 (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2017)

Jedes Jahr luden wir Gäste in den Unterricht ein. 2019 besuchten der Food Photographer Hiroshi Toyoda, die Übersetzerin Chika Kietzmann und die Malerin und Kinderbuchautorin Manami Takamatsu die Forschungswerkstatt und gaben den Studierenden die Möglichkeit, sie auf Deutsch und Japanisch zu ihrem Leben in Deutschland, ihrer Arbeit und japanischem Essen in Berlin zu befragen. Der Blog dokumentierte diese Besuche in kurzen Beiträgen und Fotos, besonders lebendig wird er aber durch die Videos, die die Studierenden zum Abschluss ihres Semesters über von ihnen selbst gewählte Themen produzierten, um verschiedenste Einblicke in die Japanischen Küche in Berlin zu geben. Neben Videos entstanden auch Projektberichte der Studierenden, die ebenfalls auf diesem Blog zu finden sind. Dazu gehört z.B. der Bericht über das Projekt „Japanische Nudelrestaurants in Berlin“ von 2019.

Ein bilinguales (Japanisch/Deutsch) Kinderbuch über Süßigkeiten und zwei Kochbücher (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2019)

Als die Forschungswerkstatt das erste Mal in Zeiten von Covid-19 mit Online-Semester und Einschränkungen des öffentlichen Lebens, wie auch diversen Schließungen von Restaurants, stattfand, mussten wir der Situation entsprechend flexibel und kreativ sein.

Eine Nachricht am Eingang eines japanischen Restaurant in Steglitz wirbt für den Abhol- und Lieferservice in einer anderen Filiale (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2020)

Ein Zettel an der Tür eines japanischen Restaurants in Steglitz informiert die Kunden in drei Sprachen über die vorübergehende Schließung (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2020)

Da wir weder Exkursionen veranstalten noch Interviewpartner einladen konnten, wurde die Interviewpraxis das erste Mal in der Forschungswerkstatt via Videokonferenz umgesetzt. Auch wenn die Restaurants dieses Jahr wieder richtig öffnen und ihre Speisen auch vor Ort anbieten konnten, war es uns als größere Gruppe im Sommer 2021 noch nicht möglich, eine gemeinsame Exkursion zu unternehmen. So feierte 2021 die ethnographische Schnitzeljagd ihr Debüt, die Einblicke in die Vielfalt der japanischen Restaurants in Berlin gewährte und zeigte, welche Erkenntnisse Feldforschung liefern kann.

Impressionen einer japanischen Bäckerei (Copyright © Sungmi Kim 2021)

Neben all den engagierten und kreativen studentischen Projekten war aber auch die Veröffentlichung des Studying Japan Handbook of Research Designs, Fieldwork and Methods (Hg. Nora Kottmann and Cornelia Reiher) Ende 2020 ein Highlight. Teilnehmer*innen der Forschungswerkstatt hatten 2019 auf der Autorenkonferenz den Autor*innen des Handbuchs ihre Erwartungen an ein solches Methodenhandbuch präsentiert. Das Handbuch profitierte maßgeblich von diesem Input der Studierenden.

Link zum Nomos Shop: https://www.nomos-shop.de/nomos/titel/studying-japan-id-89163/

Dass die Forschungswerkstatt „Japanische Küche in Berlin“ auch nach mehr als fünf Jahren weiter besteht, verdanken wir der Unterstützung von Berliner Gastronom*innen, Mitarbeiter*innen japanischer Restaurants und unseren engagierten Studierenden. Wir hoffen auch in Zukunft auf eine gute Zusammenarbeit und viele neue kreative studentische Projekte.

Irina Chernysheva, Sungmi Kim, Tim Pantenburg and Antonia Vesting conducted interviews in two Japanese restaurants in Berlin and analyzed food entrepreneurs’ concepts of authenticity. Their video project presents their results, introduces the two restaurants and provides exciting insights into Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes.

Introduction to the Video “Korona kuruna”

by Torben von Borstel and Frank Tu (Ngo Tu Thanh)

In our project, we asked owners and staff at Japanese restaurants in Berlin about their experiences with Covid-19 during and after the second lockdown from November 2020 to Mai 2021. Japanese restaurants in Berlin are quite diverse. While you can find Japanese restaurants everywhere in Berlin many are located in Charlottenburg, which is the reason why we focused on that area. With regard to the ethnicity of owners, the three biggest ethnic groups are probably Vietnamese, Japanese and Germans. We interviewed one owner or staff member from each of the three groups to get more diverse and hopefully interesting answers. Our original goal was to interview the owners, but we could get only talk to the owner of Japanese restaurant owned by Vietnamese. At the Japanese and German owned restaurants, we interviewed waitresses.

We found out that the Vietnamese owner and the Japanese waitress were satisfied with the Covid-19 regulations and state support and found them appropriate. The waitress at the German owned restaurant on the other hand was dissatisfied with the restrictions, because it made working much harder for her.

by Sungmi Kim, Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu), Tim Pantenburg and Antonia Vesting*

On Friday June 11, an especially hot day, we went to three Japanese eateries located around Kantstraße in Berlin Charlottenburg. Our general assignment was to observe the restaurants, talk to either customers or staff, take notes and pictures, and buy some food to try. We also had to hand in our field notes afterwards.

Enjoying food in front of a Japanese bakery (Copyright © Frank Tu 2021)

While observing we had to pay attention to many things. Quickly drawing maps or pictures can be a challenge especially to novel researchers. This is also true for taking pictures of the locations. Other customers or staff could get in the way and it is better to ask first before taking photos. By doing so, we realized that most people were rather kind and gave their permission. For our future projects on Japanese restaurants, it will be important to take enough time and to go to the location at different weekdays and times of the day. We also learned that participant observation can be a good way to obtain information that we otherwise would not get from interviews easily. In particular, among the three places we visited, at one place card payments was not accepted. Based on this observation, we wondered how payment options may affect the number of customers.

Decoration outside of a Japanese restaurant (Copyright © Antonia Vesting 2021)

It was interesting to observe how restaurateurs presented the food and other information and how the restaurants were decorated. For example, in Korean restaurants the names of the food are usually written both, in Korean and in German, but the three Japanese restaurants we visited, offered only menus written in rōmaji. To decorate the menu, at one place hand-drawn cartoons were used. At another restaurant there was a big puppet with the menu around the neck, it’s face decorated with the Japanese letters.

We also paid attention to the kitchens and their respective menus. For example, Kame is mainly be a bakery, but it was interesting that they have added things like karaage to their menu. A small look at their kitchen in the back revealed that they don’t make use of many automated tasks and most dishes seemed to be handmade. We had the impression that adding new dishes to the menu seems to be easy and that owners and customers alike are very flexible when trying new things.

One eatery only offers take-out food (Copyright © Tim Pantenburg 2021)

By visiting the restaurants, we were also able to collect information about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Japanese restaurateurs. On the one hand, the owner of one eatery told us that his place did not suffer much from the pandemic, since it exclusively offers takeaway options and that he had already used delivery services before the pandemic. Therefore, there was not much to change. During Berlin’s two lockdowns, the income had even increased slightly. On the other hand, an employee at one of the other restaurants stated that they did not have many customers during the lockdown.

Impressions of a Japanese bakery (Copyright © Sungmi Kim 2021)

We hope we could give some insights on how Japanese restaurants in Berlin operate and present their uniqueness and what kind of data field research can bring to the table.

*Sungmi Kim, Tim Pantenburg and Antonia Vesting are students at Freie Universität Berlin’s Japanese Studies MA Program. Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu) is a research assistant in the research project “Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan” at Freie Universität Berlin.

by Giulia Noll and Tony Pravemann*

Last week, our class was divided into multiple groups and sent to Berlin-Charlottenburg in order to put into practice the things we had learned about participant observation. The general goal of participant observation is often seen as getting to know a certain community or group of people by spending extended amounts of time with them and partaking in their activities. In contrast to interviewing, participant observation is all about getting to know people over a longer time span and being able to confirm whether their actions correspond to statements they might have previously made. Naturally, other topics are covered in our methods class as well so instead of spending a year or longer observing, we were given the task to walk down Kantstraße and observe a number of different restaurants. Charlottenburg is well known in Berlin as a thriving hub for many Asian and/or Japanese restaurants and could therefore serve as a solid practice environment.

Our group was assigned with three different tasks in total, which consisted of describing each of the restaurants, talking to the people working there and placing an order ourselves. Up to this point, none of us had any experience when it comes to participant observation and so our group started out slightly reserved when it came to approaching restaurant clerks to ask them about their respective stories and experiences working there. We visited three different restaurants over the course of the afternoon, however, we could not enter all of them due to Covid-19 regulations.

Gathering first hand experiences at Shiso Burger (copyright © Tony Pravemann 2021)

We took a closer look at the restaurants Shiso Burger, Udagawa and XXX Ramen. Shiso Burger and Udagawa have their restaurant names written in katakana and kanji which make them look quite Japanese. However, after talking to the staff of the restaurants, we found that the burger shop and the ramen shop are merely inspired by Japan. In fact, they are owned by non-Japanese and the exterior as well as the interior is simple and modern as in a lot of other restaurants in Berlin. The menu includes not only Japanese but other Asian dishes as well. On the contrary, Udagawa seems to be more on the Japanese side as it offers a full Japanese menu and features a more traditional interior. Unfortunately, we did not have the chance to talk with the staff due to the measures against Covid-19. The different Covid-19 measures were another interesting aspect we could observe. While Shiso Burger and XXX Ramen only asked for registration with the Luca app, Udagawa emphasized safety and hygiene measures by displaying several signs.

A Japanese restaurant at Kantstraße
(copyright © Tony Pravemann 2021)

From our experience, we conclude that participant observation can be a helpful method to discover things that one will not find out by interviews for example. Finally, we would like to say that observing different Japanese/Asian restaurants in Berlin was not only a great opportunity to practice this research method, but also a welcome change after months of online classes.

*Giulia Noll and Tony Pravemann are students at Freie Universität Berlin’s Japanese Studies MA Program.