Rebecca Greene:

"I was in Osaka, Japan over Spring Break 2004, doing fieldwork on language attitudes in Japan for my first qualifying paper. I and a few other students were conducting surveys and interviews. The first day I went out to collect surveys, my fellow student, Ryan, and I went to a popular area of the city with a bridge crossed by lots of tourists and Japanese people. We stood back and tried to spot good people to approach, but fear paralyzed us when we tried to get up the courage to talk to anyone. I finally decided I would try to get a young guy who was just standing there against the railing of the bridge to fill out a survey. He didn't look like he was doing anything, and he seemed cool, so I thought he might be willing to do a favor for me if I asked nicely. I worked up the nerve to go up to him, and I presented my official-looking clipboard.

"I began my lines I had been saying over and over in my head, because of course, I had to speak in Japanese. "Please excuse me, but I am a Stanford graduate student studying attitudes about language. If you have a moment, would you mind filling out a survey for me? It will take about 10 minutes." He looked at me coldly, looked at my clipboard, and nodded grudgingly. I handed him the clipboard and the pencil, and he began filling out the first page. I stood there awkwardly looking on. He looked, at least to me, like he felt pretty awkward too, standing there with his buddies around seeing him fill out some form for me. We were all losing face in this venture.

"I peered at the clipboard and saw that he was writing in a cool, rebellious way that young Japanese people sometimes do, for example writing his name in katakana, the writing system for foreign loan words. I thought, "Oh, neat!" When he got to the bottom of the first page, he was visibly relieved, but I began to panic as he handed the clipboard back at me. I protested meekly, and said, "But there are a few more pages. Is a little more okay?" I showed him the next two pages, and he shoved the clipboard and pencil back at me, and said with ice dripping from his voice, "Ooi," meaning roughly "Too much." Instantly, whatever shred of confidence I had managed to work up was destroyed. I took the clipboard and pencil, apologized, and ran back to reconvene with Ryan and tell him what had happened. In that week, we all got our confidence up, and somehow the seven of us managed to get surveys filled out by over three hundred Japanese people. We learned train stations are great for surveying strangers, unless you get run off by store owners. Stores themselves are very bad. Parks are bad, because park management will run you off. Homeless people can be very scary when they surround you, take your clipboard, and run off "to get more surveys filled out" for you. This whole research experience was very bizarre, but it gave me great data."

Please contribute your fieldwork stories to our page! We are just looking for a paragraph (or two) on where you went, what you did, and what you learned. Amusing anecdotes and dramatic sagas also appreciated, of course.