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Dancing Lessons from God
defined alternative research option would be. So, I, together with the
three of them, decided that I would be getting on the bus.
Later, at approximately two in the morning, I went to visit the re-
strooms located in a series of connected outhouses behind the inn
buildings. When I came out of a restroom stall, I passed a man go-
ing in (a time and place when many significant but unrecorded eth-
nographic interactions possibly occur). He said: “I understand you
are going with us in the morning.” I mumbled that I was and went
back to bed. Although I fell immediately to sleep, my subconscious
mind must have been alerted to this communication exchange. When
I woke up, I realized I should try to find out who this man was. He
turned out to be the leader of the group that had chartered the bus
trip. The innkeeper, the bus driver, and the nice maternal lady who
passes out refreshments and gives information on the bus had all in-
vited me along on this trip. The bus driver was an independent bus
driver, who owned his bus. The tour, however, had been chartered by
the man I met at the toilets. I realized that in some sense, he, and not
the bus driver, owned “the trip,” if not the bus. He was the one who
really should have been deciding who could go along.
I therefore went to talk to him and apologized for any possible im-
pertinence. He assured me he was quite happy I would be going along.
The bus was actually quite empty and he was traveling with a group of
young adults as part of Japan’s Kokusaika or “Internationalization”
projects. He knew I was a professor from a foreign country and thus
felt it would be a bonus if I joined them. It would make it even more
Kokusai-teki (“international-like”) if I were willing to go along. They
would like me to come along and also take part in their activities and
discussions. If I had any doubts left, a line from a Kurt Vonnegut novel,
Cat’s Cradle, that I had read long ago as an undergraduate student,
and that had particularly impressed me, rang through my mind: “Pe-
culiar traveling suggestions, are dancing lessons from god” (Vonnegut
1963 [ 1998 ], 63 ). Ever since I first read the line, I have allowed it to
enter in as a factor in pursuit of my path in life. Here was a chance to
allow the same invocation to enter into the research plan.
I would learn on this journey that everyone in the group (exclud-
ing the leader, the bus driver and bus guide) was Burakumin. Buraku-
min are a discriminated-against minority group in Japan descended
