Interviewing people in Shibuya

Today I headed out to Shibuya and met up with a guy from class where we interviewed people and started work on our presentation for Race Studies. The quickest way from Odaiba to Shibuya involves using the Rinkai line. The line actually runs under the sea as opposed to the bridge that is used by the Yurikamome.

At all the train stations in Tokyo they have guides posted that let you know where the exits are in relation to the train so you know what car to use to save yourself sometime when you get to your destination station. I took a picture of this one because I think the icons used to show the elevators or escalators are funny. All the people figures have smile faces on them.

So I met up in Shibuya with Yuya and we took the camera to the streets to find out what people think of Koreans living in Japan. We had a slow start as we found that many Japanese are very shy and did not want to be interviewed. We were able to get a couple interviews but we're gonna meet up again soon to get some more interviews done. The people that we interviewed had a much more open view then I thought and didn't really see a difference between Korean and Japanese people.

Racist views are still common in Japan. It's not uncommon to see large black vans that have the emperors crest painted on the side that will be parked in front of large stations such as Shibuya or Shinjuku. The vans are equipped with Megaphones and will typically be found with a Right Wing Nationalist Japanese on top with a mic talking about how Japan should be a pure country, basically wanting to go back to how Japan was in the 1930's

A cool thing they they have in Shibuya is a interactive map on a touch screen display that is about 35". It's really cool, it works in English, Korean, Chinese, and of course Japanese. It's a great tool to find your way around and helps take the work load off of the police who's main job is giving people directions when they are lost.

Aya sent me a picture of her at work, it's hilarious.