In doing fieldwork, I've come to realize that rather than doing the fieldwork and interviewing people, it was really refreshing to see the people interact with their customers and talk about how things used to be. Although I myself didn't experience what they did and don't know what life back then was like for them, but in a sense it was also kind of nostalgic to see them talk about the old days - it was as if I could kind of live in the past through their stories and their experiences.

Although it's kind of ironic, but as we were asking questions about tradition and about business and how their business has changed over time, at one point just hearing about how their business came to be and seeing how they live more or less everyday of their lives became the more interesting part.

More than tradition, reality is in the end reality - regardless of how closely you work with tradition, it seems like at the end of the day it was just simply another part of everyday life.

実際に、「伝統」というのはそんなに硬くないものではないだろうか。

いずれにせよ、「伝統」は人生の一部分だけです。これからも、「伝統」はこのまま時間の流れによって段々変わっていくかもしれません。

It was also interesting to see how all sorts of different seemingly unrelated business have similar patterns and all have a sense of community, as well as how they are affected by modernization and internationalization.

As for myself, participating in this course was the first time I had to approach and talk to strangers on my own, so I feel that I've grown greatly in that sense because I even managed to go through with an interview in a language that I'm not native in. In addition, fieldwork has also given me a chance to put my Japanese skills to the test because the people we interviewed all spoke in Japanese, some faster than others and using more difficult terminology than others, so it was interesting to have to put myself in the real-world environment where people wouldn't necessarily go out of their way to make everything they say understandable to someone who isn't native in the language.

Thinking about tradition, I remembered that Chinese New Year in America used to be celebrated by all the Chinese Americans and Chinese families in the area, but this year there was a big snow storm and most of the people who showed up were Caucasian. So remembering that makes me wonder if Chinese traditions in America are also kind of changing due to the people and the community.

Tradition can't exist without people and a community to support it. 人がいないなら、そしてコミュニティーがないと、伝統も続けません。

I also came to realize that as a Chinese American, even though my parents are both Chinese, I don't know everything about Chinese traditions as a Chinese person who grew up in China. In Reading class a couple weeks ago, we did an activity on 昔話 and although I knew of it, I didn't really know about it. Because I grew up in America, it's kind of a しょうがない situation but I think it's the same either way. Regardless of whether you're Chinese or Japanese, life is not all about tradition - tradition is simply just a part of life.