ABSTRACT
As visitors to an exotic and much-studied city,
we were wary of our position as outsiders, blind
to so much of what happens and why, but also
able to see some things clearly due to our lack
of familiarity. Rather than trying to work out the
logic or meaning of the whole, we started this
extended field research by diving straight into
the middle. Our students, on exchange from
Melbourne, commenced by catching a train into
Shinjuku Station, choosing an exit, and then
working their way out through this opening into
the surroundings.