Memoir (24) by Professor Joe Watkins, University of Arizona, USA
On Friday afternoon, August 18, 2023, Carol Ellick (my wife) and I boarded a flight from New Chitose Airport bound for Haneda’s Tokyo International Airport as an interim stop. From Haneda we flew to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) then home to Tucson, Arizona. For me, it was the end to an incredible year, one filled with excitement and wonder, but also one of quietude and occasional cultural isolation.
When I came to Sapporo in July of 2022, I had lofty intentions to complete a manuscript about the contemporary struggles of Ainu communities in Japan, with enough archaeological, ethnographic, and other scientific information as background to enable non-specialists to better comprehend the situation people of Ainu descent encountered within contemporary Japanese society. I also had lofty intentions of getting more comfortable in Nihongo (Japanese). Other than those two goals, I was hoping to be open to new experiences and to learn as much as I could about Hokkaido culture.
Carol and I first came to Hokkaido in 2007 to present in a symposium organized by Dr. Hirofumi Kato on topics concerning public education and outreach in archaeology, American Indian methods of determining tribal membership, and issues concerning repatriation of American Indian human remains and other objects. Since then, we have journeyed to Hokkaido as often as possible to work with archaeological field schools, present in symposia on tourism, public outreach, North American archaeology, and various other topics of importance to the students and colleagues of the Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies. We have interacted with students whom we have seen mature from undergraduates to post-doctorate fellows.
I intend to write more on the year abroad as time allows, and I hope you will understand the experiences I had will take me a bit of time to process and better comprehend. Until then, in the words of songwriter Paul Simon, “Gee but it’s great to be back home …”
Tokyo sunset 18 August 2023
Hollywood noontime 18 August 2023