BAJS Conference —UEA (2022年2月25日)
It’s been a long two years since events in person and networking has been a thing, so I was really excited to learn e British Association of Japanese Studies was holding an event for MA and Ph.D students and, even better, it was being held at the UEA! So I registered, I made my meishi and had been looking forward to this all month. Sadly I didn’t account for a wedding a few days prior and waking up that morning with the mother of all head colds which, as of posting this, I’m still not recovered from.
(No, not COVID. I checked. Several times.)
The one-day conference actually began the night before with a reception held at the Sainsbury Centre, with guests of honour including the Mayor of Norwich, and it was an excellent opportunity to mingle and chat over wine and sushi. Tate is very good at networking but it was quite an odd feeling to be in a room with so many people! I was also nice to dress up, using jewelry and a enamel pin to signal my fandoms… I immediately ran into another Sailor Moon fan and we discussed merch, pins and the juxtaposition of having to pay for access for the ability to buy merch, aka the Pretty Guardians Fan Club.
The following morning, we all met for breakfast (I stayed on campus overnight and ended up serving as defacto, and ironic, guide) and started chatting properly. To my delight, the Campus Kitchen was not only serving real meals again but also using china plates and cutlery, after five months of cardboard boxes and balsa wood knives and forks. We finished up and then ambled through the campus for registration.
The event itself was being held in the Thomas Paine Centre, one of the more modern buildings on Chancellor’s Drive, where I’ve had a lot of lectures, as well as the initial MA open event I went to back before the pandemic. We milled about drinking coffee and talking, before the event being opened by Dr. Christopher Hood (@cphood) of the BAJS (who said very nice things about Tate, but also uttered the immortal phrase ‘we give you (Ph.d students) free money!’) and Dr. Simon Kaner of SISJAC.
The event itself was divided into three main sessions: the morning block in which we were divided into groups of likeminded students with similar research areas and had presentations on said topics, allowing me to instantly want to connect with half the group. One researcher, for example, was looking at the period in the nineties where anime and manga effectively vanished from the UK while another was discussing what she called ‘hauntology’ and we ended up bonding over careers and a love of Yamamura Sadako, Japanese horror computer games.
After lunch, there were several talks on funding. Yes, these were aimed at Ph.D candidates and post-doc early career researchers, but I attended as I intend to be a Ph.D candidate come September 2023, so it was all relevant and worthwhile. Dr. Hood also did a fascinating talk on collaboration, which—as he pointed out—we were already doing by attending this event and networking.
One thing I did have on some of the candidates was a little life experience I was glad of. Ten years working with Japanese people meant I was good at etiquette. I was pretty much one of the only attendees, outside of the tutors and organisers, who had meishi ready to go. At least this way, people can contact me and I did make a point of sharing LinkedIn and Facebook contacts with several folks I really wanted to talk to.
The highlight of the day was the arrival of the Japanese ambassador, his Excellency Hayashi Hajime. He appeared and gave a speech in front of the attendees (who included the Mayor, the Sheriff and other VIPS) to conclude the conference. This included his connection with Norwich and addressing the concerns of many of the attendees about the Japan’s closed borders which, according to that day’s news, would be reopening properly in March. However many of the attendees were still concerned as some of them needed to be in Japan to complete their research.
The reception to conclude the day included some very nice sake, as well as a chance to feed back about the conference and, thanks to Dr. Kaner, I got to meet his Excellency and thank him for attending but also, for addressing the academics/border issues. Then, in all honesty, I staggered back to my hotel room and to just die quietly… By that point in the day, my cold was in full force and I just felt utterly wretched. That said, though, it was still worth attending!
While some of the events weren’t aimed at me specifically, I certainly found direction and it was welly worth the chance to meet people, to talk and to share ideas and plans. The event is (usually) held each year at different universities and I definitely plan to go to next year’s, regardless of location. I’m actually quite looking forward to being able to meet up with some of the attendees and present my own research. The entire event left me feeling I was also on a par with the attendees, as a colleague, rather than the usual dynamic of student and teacher or member of a cohort.
