Ethnographic field notes. As previously stated I generated approximately 204 pages of typed field notes from my observations at Hoshūkō69. Field notes are considered primary data in the doing of ethnography and they are key in producing constructions of the practices of the research participants (Xxxxxx et al., 2008). They are the researcher’s first attempt at transforming the lived experiences during participant observation into written accounts (Xxxxxxx et al., 2001). However, the ethnographer cannot record everything in the field notes and s/he will be exposed to various points of view and 67 Xxxxxx’s brother was a friend of my younger son. I was really surprised that Xxxxxx started talking to me as he hadn’t done this before even though I had given him a lift to Football Club Japan (FCJ) in the past. 68 This is the primary school which my two sons had attended. 69 In addition, I also wrote field notes from memory when transcribing the conversational interviews. priorities (Xxxxxxx et al., 1995). Xxxxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx (2007, p. 142) believe that ‘[f]ield notes are always selective: it is not possible to capture everything. And there is a trade-off between breadth of focus and detail’. Xxxxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx (2007, p. 147) argue that: Field notes cannot possibly provide a comprehensive record of the research setting. The ethnographer acquires a great deal more tacit knowledge than is ever contained in the written record. He or she necessarily uses ‘head notes’ or memory to fill in and recontextualize recorded events and utterances. Field notes ‘are often messy, fragmented and complex creations of ourselves and the other selves in the field’ (Xxxxxx, 1999, p. 122). This suggests that the writing of field notes is not a straight forward process as activities are ‘not linear and coherent but multiple, layered, chequered and unstable. […]’ (Xxxxxxxxx and Xxxx, 2010, p.11). What is more ‘Ethnography tries to […] describe the apparently messy and complex activities that make up social action, not to reduce their complexity but to describe and explain it’ (ibid). The way in which my field notes were constructed was sometimes dependent upon my level of participation at Hoshūkō. When I was positioned as a parent, for example, when volunteering in the library, observing my younger son’s class, and observing the institutionalised practices, I could not openly make notes. In the library note taking was not possible because I was trying to experience a ‘more natural, open experience of oth...
