Tokyo Stay is a project that seeks to uncover the narratives that potentially lie within Tokyo through experiences of staying in the city. We are organizing a program of lectures for the purpose of learning about research perspectives and techniques from fascinating experts in various fields whom we think have interesting stories to tell.

The first lecture is entitled The Physicality of Fieldwork and our guest lecturer will be Fumitoshi Kato, a member of Curry Caravan.
Curry Caravan is a project that visits communities nationwide to create a curry unique to that time and place by blending local ingredients with the knowledge of local people. In sharing this meal, participants explore ideas about ways of interacting with others.
Over the five years since the project began, the Curry Caravan has popped up about once a month on average, visiting around 60 places from Hokkaido to Kyushu.
Kato says that the most important aspect is the live, unplanned experience of encountering people for the first time in unfamiliar places, and cooking and eating curry with them. Rather than being detached observers, the Curry Caravan team fully immerse themselves in the experience at each location, happily betraying the traditional image conveyed by the term “fieldwork.”
We hope to gain hints about research perspectives and techniques while exploring Kato’s activities from a variety of angles, including his unique viewpoint, the encounters he has had while traveling around the country, and the physical senses that these experiences have cultivated.