Date: 07/04/2015
Field Trip:
We went to go visit the 里山 today.
We walked around the area and saw a lot of different things - it was different to not be interviewing people but instead looking at nature and how the people living in the 里山 have been trying to preserve it.
It was interesting to see the different kind of lifestyle that they live, and how they do almost everything manually. It's like reverse-modernization and return to the "traditional ways."
At one point, they said that eagles eat live birds, and if there are enough live birds, it means that nature in the area is kind of still in balance/maintaining itself. If there were not enough live birds/no eagles, it would mean that humans have kind of taken over the area so the eagles would have moved somewhere else.
It was an interesting thought to hear - since all our interviews/presentations often involve people talking about tradition/internationalization, it was interesting to hear someone actually say that "tourism isn't good for the environment" even though in today's society, tourism equals revenue for the country which is good for the economy, etc.
Reflection:
The things we heard at 里山 were kind of like the reverse of what we'd been hearing from our interviews about what they thought about 「伝統」.
A lot of the people we interviewed had been saying that 「伝統」 is something that (has to/naturally) changes over time in order to exist, not that it's sticking to old methods and old ways and old ideas/thinking/etc. Whereas the people in the 里山 were doing the exact opposite - they were using old methods and maintaining the tradition in efforts to restore and maintain the area. I thought that was an interesting contrast - the "city" area where we live vs. the 里山 where they're kind of off and on their own doing their own thing.