0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Dancing Lessons from God
Nibutani) to another area for other commitments. Although there
was much I could have pursued if I had had a great deal more time, I
was faced with too much time to “waste” but not that much more I
could accomplish regarding the set of objectives for the project on the
Ainu in that location within the remaining time frame. The research
plan allowed for such a possibility by including an optional trip to
Abishiri, also located in Hokkaido ̄ , where there is a museum on the
Ainu; however, I had been there years earlier.
In Nibutani, I was staying at an inn run by an Ainu family. The last
night I was there, they invited me to an extended dinner they were
hosting outside in the back area of the inn compound. This led to the
somewhat common ethnographic experience of drinking with the in-
formant–host, in this case, the Ainu owner of the inn. Sensing a pos-
sible need to legitimize this, I draw on Malinowski’s prescription for
healthy ethnographic fieldwork. He writes: “It is good for the Ethnog-
rapher sometimes to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to
join in [oneself] in what is going on” (Malinowski 1922 , 21 ). There
was also a group of people having dinner with us. One of these, a bus
driver, seemed to be good friends with the Ainu innkeeper. The inn-
keeper, who knew I was planning on leaving Nibutani the next day,
introduced me to the bus driver and got me engaged in conversation
with him. At one point, the innkeeper put his arm around my shoul-
der, and asked, “Where are you going tomorrow?” (A question that
now strikes me as bearing similarity to Wolcott’s ( 1999 , 38 ) ethno-
graphic question “where do you think you are going?” that shows
how place intersects with purpose.) I really must have turned into the
bad ethnographer, because the informants were now not only asking
me the question but, as we shall see, also told me what the answer to
this question was. In effect, I was being asked: “Where do you think
you are going?”
I explained that I had decided to go to Abishiri, to the museum.
“No,” said the innkeeper, “you are going on the bus with my friend.”
Then he laid out what they had constructed as my travel plan. His bus
driver friend was driving a group on a trip around the outer reaches
of Hokkaido ̄. Places, he told me, that were very difficult to get to and
that I would have to pay a great deal to get to by public transporta-
tion (which was true, independent of the difficulties of even getting
