Recently in Fieldnotes Category

I had trouble locating the full text of the 1900 Mental Patient Custody Act in Japan. Here it is below for mostly my purposes. The original was here (http://www.geocities.jp/nakanolib/hou/hm33-38.htm) but like all things on the web, I don't want to count on it still being there.

精神病者監護法(明治33年法律第38号)

第一条　精神病者ハ其ノ後見人配偶者四親等内ノ親族又ハ戸主ニ於テ之ヲ監護スルノ義務ヲ負フ但シ民法第九百八条ニ依リ後見人タルコトヲ得サル者ハ此ノ限ニ在ラス
2　監護義務者数人アル場合ニ於テ其ノ義務ヲ履行スヘキ者ノ順位ハ左ノ如シ但シ監護義務者相互ノ同意ヲ以テ順位ヲ変更スルコトヲ得
　第一　後見人
　第二　配偶者
　第三　親権ヲ行フ父又ハ母
　第四　戸主
　第五　前各号ニ掲ケタル者ニ非サル四親等内ノ親族中ヨリ親族会ノ選任シタル者

第二条　監護義務者ニ非サレハ精神病者ヲ監置スルコトヲ得ス

第三条　精神病者ヲ監置セムトスルトキハ行政庁ノ許可ヲ受クヘシ但シ急迫ノ事情アルトキハ仮リニ之ヲ監置スルコトヲ得此ノ場合ニ於テハ二十四時間内ニ行政庁ニ届出ヘシ
2　前項仮監置ノ期間ハ七日ヲ超ユルコトヲ得ス
3　行政庁ノ許可ヲ受ケテ監置シタル精神病者ノ監置ヲ廃止シタル後三箇年内ニ更ニ之ヲ監置セムトスルトキ又ハ民法第九百二十二条ニ依リ禁治産者ヲ監置セムトスルトキハ行政庁ニ届出ヘシ

第四条　精神病者ノ監置ノ方法又ハ場所ヲ変更シタルトキハ二十四時間内ニ行政庁ニ届出ヘシ

第五条　監置シタル精神病者治癒シ死亡シ若ハ行方不明ト為リタルトキ又ハ其ノ監置ヲ廃止シタルトキハ七日内ニ行政庁ニ届出ヘシ

第六条　精神病者ヲ監置スルノ必要アルモ監護義務者ナキ場合又ハ監護義務者其ノ義務ヲ履行スルコト能ハサル事由アルトキハ精神病者ノ住所地、住所地ナキトキ又ハ不明ナルトキハ所在地市区町村長ハ勅令ノ定ムル所ニ従ヒ之ヲ監護スヘシ

第七条　行政庁ハ精神病者ノ監護ニ関シ必要ト認ムルトキハ監置ノ許可ヲ取消シ監置ノ廃止ヲ命シ又ハ監置ノ方法若ハ場所ノ変更ヲ命スルコトヲ得
2　監置ノ許可ヲ取消サレ又ハ其ノ廃止ヲ命セラレタル者監置ヲ廃止セサルトキハ行政庁ハ直接ニ監置ヲ廃止スルコトヲ得

第八条　精神病者監置ノ必要アルトキ又ハ監置不適当ト認ムルトキハ行政庁ハ第一条第二項ノ順位ニ拘ラス監護義務者ヲ指定シ之カ監置ヲ命スルコトヲ得但シ急迫ノ事情アルトキハ行政庁ハ仮リニ其ノ精神病者ヲ監置スルコトヲ得此ノ場合ニ於テハ第三条第二項ノ規定ヲ準用ス
2　市区町村長ニ於テ監護スル精神病者ノ監護義務者ヲ発見シ又ハ監護義務者其ノ義務ヲ履行シ得ルニ至リタルトキ亦前項ニ同シ
3　本条ニ依リ精神病者ノ監置ヲ命セラレタル監護義務者其ノ命ヲ履行セサルトキハ第六条ノ例ニ依リ市区町村長ニ於テ之ヲ監護スヘシ
4　本条ニ依リ監護義務者ノ監置シタル精神病者ニ関シテハ行政庁ノ許可ヲ受クルニ非サレハ其ノ監置ヲ廃止シ又ハ監置ノ方法若ハ場所ヲ変更スルコトヲ得ス

第九条　私宅監置室、公私立精神病院及公私立病院ノ精神病室ハ行政庁ノ許可ヲ受クルニ非サレハ之ヲ使用スルコトヲ得ス
2　私宅監置室、公私立精神病院及公私立病院ノ精神病室ノ構造設備及管理方法ニ関スル規定ハ命令ヲ以テ之ヲ定ム

第十条　監護ニ要シタル費用ハ被監護者ノ負担トシ被監護者ヨリ弁償ヲ得サルトキハ其ノ扶養義務者ノ負担トス
2　市町村長ニ於テ監護スル場合ニ於テ之カ為要スル費用ノ支弁方法及其ノ追徴方法ハ行旅病人及行旅死亡人取扱法ノ規定ヲ準用ス

第十一条　行政庁ハ必要ト認ムルトキハ其ノ指定シタル医師ヲシテ精神病者ノ検診ヲ為サシメ又ハ官吏若ハ医師ヲシテ精神病者ニ関シ必要ナル尋問ヲ為サシメ又ハ精神病者在ル家宅病院其ノ他ノ場所ニ臨検セシムルコトヲ得

第十二条　本法又ハ本法ニ基ツキテ発スル命令ノ執行ニ関シ行政庁ノ違法処分ニ由リ権利ヲ傷害セラレタリトスル者ハ行政裁判所ニ出訴スルコトヲ得

第十三条　本法又ハ本法ニ基ツキテ発スル命令ノ執行ニ関スル行政庁ノ処分ニ不服アル者ハ訴願ヲ提起スルコトヲ得

第十四条　官吏公吏又ハ行政庁ノ命ヲ受ケテ公務ヲ行フ医師本法ノ執行ニ関シ不正ノ所為ヲ為シタル者ハ三年以下ノ重禁錮ニ処シ百円以下ノ罰金ヲ附加ス

第十五条　官吏公吏又ハ行政庁ノ命ヲ受ケテ公務ヲ行フ医師本法ノ執行ニ関シ賄賂ヲ収受シ又ハ之ヲ聴許シタル者ハ刑法第二百八十六条ノ例ニ照ラシテ処断ス

第十六条　左ニ掲クル者ハ一年以下ノ重禁錮ニ処シ百円以下ノ罰金ヲ附加ス
　一　詐偽ノ所為ヲ以テ行政庁ノ許可ヲ受ケ若ハ虚偽ノ届出ヲ為シ精神病者ヲ監置シ又ハ拘束ノ程度ヲ加重シタル者
　二　医師精神病者ノ診断書ニ虚偽ノ事実ヲ記載シ又ハ自ラ診断セスシテ診断書ヲ授与シタル者
2　前項第一号ノ場合ニ於テハ監置又ハ拘束ノ日数十日ヲ過クル毎ニ一等ヲ加フ

第十七条　左ニ掲クル者ハ二月以下ノ重禁錮ニ処シ二十円以下ノ罰金ヲ附加シ又ハ百円以下ノ罰金ニ処ス但シ監置又ハ拘束ノ日数十日ヲ過クル毎ニ一等ヲ加フ
　一　許可ヲ受ケス又ハ届出ヲ為サス若ハ命ヲ受ケスシテ精神病者トシテ人ヲ監置シタル者
　二　禁治産ノ宣告又ハ監置ノ許可ヲ取消サレ又ハ監置ノ廃止ヲ命セラレ若ハ仮監置ノ期間ヲ経過シタル後監置ヲ廃止セサル者
　三　許可ヲ受ケ又ハ届出ヲ為シ若ハ命ヲ受ケタル程度ヲ超エテ精神病者ヲ拘束シタル者

第十八条　左ニ掲クル者ハ一月以下ノ重禁錮ニ処シ十円以下ノ罰金ヲ附加シ又ハ五十円以下ノ罰金ニ処ス
　一　精神病者ノ監置ニ関シ虚偽ノ事実ヲ記載シタル願届其ノ他ノ書類ヲ行政庁ニ提出シタル者
　二　監護義務ヲ履行スヘキ順位ニ在ラサル者ニシテ許可ヲ受ケス又ハ命ニ依ルニ非スシテ監置ヲ廃止シ又ハ監置ノ方法若ハ場所ヲ変更シタル者
　三　官吏又ハ行政庁ノ指定シタル医師ノ臨検若ハ検診ヲ拒ミ又ハ其ノ尋問ニ対シ答弁ヲ為サス若ハ虚偽ノ答弁ヲ為シタル者

第十九条　左ニ掲クル者ハ百円以下ノ罰金二処ス
　一　監置ノ方法若ハ場所ノ変更ヲ命セラレ其ノ命ヲ履行セサル者
　二　監護義務者精神病者ノ監置ヲ命セラレ其ノ命ヲ履行セサル者
　三　第八条第四項及第九条第一項ニ違背シタル者

第二十条　第四条及第五条ニ違背シタル者ハ十円以下ノ罰金二処ス

　　附　則

第二十一条　本法ハ明治三十三年七月一日ヨリ之ヲ施行ス
2　本法施行前ヨリ精神病者ヲ監置シタル者ニシテ仍之ヲ継続セムトスルトキハ本法施行ノ日ヨリ二箇月内ニ第三条ノ許可ヲ受ケ又ハ届出ヲ為スヘシ
3　第三条ノ許可ヲ受ケス又ハ届出ヲ為サスシテ前項ノ期間ヲ経過シタル後監置ヲ廃止セサル者ハ第十七条ノ例ニ照シテ処断ス
4　本法中市区町村長ニ属スル職務ハ市制区制町村制ヲ施行セサル地ニ在リテハ市区町村長二準スヘキ者之ヲ行フ

第二十二条　外国人タル精神病者ノ監護ニ関シ別段ノ規定ヲ要スルモノハ勅令ヲ以テ之ヲ定ム

第二十三条　人事訴訟手続法第五十条又ハ第六十条ニ依リ裁判所ニ於テ精神病者ノ監護ニ付必要ナル処分ヲ命シタル場合ニ関シテハ本法ノ規定ヲ適用セス

▲

制作者註
この法律は、明治33年3月10日に公布され、同7月1日より施行された。上掲のものは、昭和22年法律第223号による改正前の制定時の条文である。
この法律は、昭和22年法律第223号および昭和23年法律第260号による改正がなされた。
精神衛生法(昭和25年法律第123号)附則2項により、本法は昭和25年5月1日をもって廃止された。なお、「精神衛生法」は「精神保健法」に改題された後、現在はさらに「精神保健及び精神障害者福祉に関する法律」に改題されている。

These days I've been busy editing my new film, titled A Japanese Funeral. A few months into my fieldworkin Japan, one of my informants died. I was given the opportunity to film the entire funeral sequence -- from the moment the body came back from the hospital to the cremation.

Editing it was very difficult emotionally for me. I'm close to the family, which is why I got the permission to film it. But it also means I feel a deep responsibility to make sure my informant's death is remembered properly.

The film is designed to be shown in the classroom. The current rough cut is 10 minutes, but after watching it today I think I cut it a bit too short and might expand it to 15 minutes. I want to screen it to a few more people first, though.

One of the students in my visual anthro class asked about how to capture an iChat video conversation (both sides). She wanted to tape a conversation with one of her informants. A little googling revealed a neat little application called Conference Recorder:

http://www.macworld.com/article/50727/2006/05/conferencerecorder.html

There are also some neat tips in the article, including the use of SnapZ or Garage Band to record iChat (and perhaps Skype) conversations.

As always, let the other person know that you are recording the conversation -- for ethical and legal reasons.

We talked in my Ethnographic Filmmaking class yesterday about field journals. I'm particular to keeping paper journals (which I scan and PDF) but students had some recommendations for online journaling software:

Mac:

• http://journler.com/
  
• OmniOutliner
  

PC:

• WhizFolders
  

Online:

• Evernote
  

I should mention that some of my grad students have also experimented with using blogging software set to a privacy mode to blog their fieldnotes.

I also posted an older (but much more extensive) list a while ago: http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/archives/2007/01/fieldnotes-soft.html

I recently gave a talk at a symposium during the 4th annual meeting of the Japan Disability Studies association. It was held on September 17-18th at Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University.

There's a short article in the Kyoto News: http://www.kyoto-np.co.jp/article.php?mid=P2007091700113&genre=G1&area=K1C

During my recent visit to Awaji Island, I went to the Nojima Fault Preservation Museum. The Nojima fault was the cause of the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake that killed over 6400 people in the Kobe-Awaji area.

What was unique about the Nojima area of Awaji Island was that the fault plane was clearly visible as it sheared the earth up several centimeters and laterally a meter or so. This caused roads, ditches, hedges, fences, and buildings to buckle and shear in a unique fashion. The photos below express it best. After the earthquake, an effort was made to preseve the physical evidence by building a museum over it.

This photo shows the shear line clearly. The two halves are composed of different types of soils because this area has been seismologically active for some time, causing the two halves to exhibit different properties.

One of the doctoral students asked me in May which digital camera he should get for his summer predissertation fieldwork. He was leaning towards getting a digital SLR but I suggested he instead look at high-end compact digital point-and-shoots -- specifically the ones in the 8-10 megapixel and $400-600 range. He ended up getting the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2.

Just as I believe that film rangefinders are superior to film SLRs for ethnographic work because of their portability and inconspiciousness, I think the high-end compact digital camera has now come of age. They now have just as many megapixels as their dSLR brethren and if the engineers can work on the noise reduction of high-ISO images just a little bit more (and put back in optical viewfinders), they'll be perfect.

Fast forward a month later and I'm in Japan looking at the various options for my own fieldwork this summer and fall. After a couple of hours playing with the various cameras at Yodobashi Camera in Umeda (Osaka Station), I ended up choosing the same camera -- the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2. Here are the things that I particularly like about it:

• 16:9 frame format (4:3 and 3:2 selectable)
• 24mm equivalent on the widest angle, about 100 mm on the tele
• 10 megapixels
• SDHC compatible -- I bought an 8 gigabyte SDHC card for it
• Movie format (MJPEG)

There's some shutter lag, but if you prefocus you can take sports photographs with a little practice (see photograph of one of my informants playing ball). I'm also playing with the movie mode and finding it isn't nearly as unusable as I thought it'd be.

Now the big news is that the new Mac OS 10.4.10 update now supports the Lumix RAW format of the LX2. I'm storing all my fieldwork photographs in Apple Aperture and using its powerful organizing indexing functions.

I've uploaded a two minute trailer for Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan onto a new website I've dedicated for Bethel publicity: http://www.disability.jp/bethel

Please enjoy!

I was asked the other day by a graduate student about how to get published by a university press. I thought the easiest thing to do was to post the letter that I wrote to Cornell University Press back in 2003 proposing the book that eventually became Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity.

November 14, 2003 Roger Haydon Senior Editor Cornell University Press Sage House 512 East State Street Ithaca NY 14850 Dear Mr. Haydon: I enjoyed meeting you earlier this year at the Asian Studies conference. I regret that we did not have the opportunity to talk further in depth about the manuscript that I am currently working on and apologize for the delay in sending you the proposal. Cornell University Press has a reputation for cutting edge work in Asian Studies that blends political science, ethnography and history. I am excited by the opportunity of working with you on this project. That’s Sign Fascism!: The Conflict Over Deaf Identity and Sign Language in Contemporary Japan is the story of the development of deaf communities, minority identities, and political movements. It is designed to be able to be read in introductory Japanese culture and history, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Deaf Studies, and Disability Studies, courses as well as focused topic courses in those areas. In my book, I trace the history and development of deaf identity from the turn of the 19th century, linking deaf identity with early Showa and post-War modernization and industrialization discourses. I embed oral histories (well... in reality they were signed histories) from deaf women in the different generational cohorts to illustrate how larger social and political forces have shaped individual life stories. The title refers to a comment made by one of the leaders within the somewhat assimilationist (albeit communist-inflected) Japanese Federation of the Deaf. She was incensed by the new generation of deaf activists who were adopting an American-style, radical, separationist deaf identity. The youth activists were claiming that they were the true bearers of a “pure JSL” (Japanese Sign Language) and attempting to control the lexicon and grammar through various means. The book ends by exploring how the language wars around Japanese signing are evidence of changing generational attitudes towards disability, identity, and culture in Japan. Written for advanced undergraduates and interested laypeople, this ethnography appeals to several readerships. Deafness has characteristics of both ethnic minority as well as disability status. Those interested in minority groups in Japan will be attracted to my explicit analysis and comparison of the deaf against other Japanese minority groups (including the Burakumin and zainichi Koreans). As you may know, several volumes on minorities in Japan have come out in the past several years, indicating that this is increasingly an area of scholarly interest. Sonia Ryang’s recent edited volume on Koreans in Japan, the slate of books on Brazilian Nikkeijin, and the interest in Okinawan studies all point to minority studies as an area of growth in Japan Studies and Asian Studies. My book also contributes to the growing field of Deafness and Disability Studies. While there are numerous texts on deaf communities in Western contexts, there are not many books that deal with deafness or disability cross-culturally. My co-edited volume Many Ways to be Deaf (Gallaudet University Press) released this summer has already sold 300 units in the first month, according to my most recent royalty statement. This is as a $70 344-page hardcover volume with little advertising. I have no doubt that a paperback monograph on deafness in Japan will have much broader appeal in deaf and disability studies, similar to Nora Groce’s (1988) classic Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language (Harvard U Press), which is ranked 78,000th in Amazon.com and which has gone back to print several times. In terms of CUP publications, I would situate my text between Ellis Krauss’ Broadcasting Politics in Japan and Joshua Roth’s Brokered Homeland. I’m enclosing a table of contents and the first two chapters for your consideration. Please also find enclosed a reprint of my Social Sciences Japan Journal article, which was awarded the 2003 ISS/Oxford University Press Award for Modern Japanese Studies and is based on a chapter of this book. I would like to sign a contract at your earliest convenience with the manuscript to be submitted by May 2004. As I will be working on a new project by August 2004 funded through the Abe Fellowship, I have considerable incentive to finish this project by the end of next summer. Sincerely, Karen Nakamura Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology Macalester College

Hi Karen,

-Loren

My Workflow

In the field, I usually operate as a one-person crew. If I'm lucky, my partner can help me with a second camera and do interviews, but usually I am by myself. Sound is important to me, so I try to use wireless lav mics or use dual-system sound with a digital audio recorder. I shoot everything to HDV and label each cassette with the date, sequence number, and topic, and camera name. For example: 20051221b-BETHEL – Canon is the second tape I shot on December 21st, 2005 at the Bethel Community using my Canon XL-H1.

I write daily fieldnotes and I note the tape numbers in my fieldnotes where possible. Otherwise, I just correlate them later by date and time. I don't otherwise have time to log and review tapes in the field. I also carry a very minimal fieldkit which doesn't include a preview monitor (except the one built-into the camera). This has led to some problems -- noticeably that I have fluorescent flickering in some sequences of Bethel because Hokkaido uses a different power frequency than western Japan. This was not noticed until I went into post.

After the first fieldwork period, I went through the tapes that I knew had core material and I made a rough cut with them in SD mode (standard def using the built-in downconverter on the XL-H1). I sequenced a few shots together in iMovie to get a sense of what the film could be about. This gave me a sense of what I was missing (hospital life, community activities, etc.). When I went back to the field again, I shot those additional sequences.

Back home, I organized and logged all of the tapes. I had about 40 hours of tape for the two shoots in Hokkaido. Since the film is about 60 minutes long, that's a 40:1 shooting ratio. Pretty high, but I'm not very skilled. I captured and logged everything into Final Cut Pro. With each hour of HDV about 8 gigabytes, the 40 hours fit fairly well onto a 500 gibabyte hard drive that I dedicated to this project. Since i was using Final Cut Pro HDV, I stayed with the HDV codec rather than converting to a HD or intermediate codec that would take up much more space on the hard drive. The trade-off was some additional processing time, but the Quad-Core Mac Pro made that less important than it could've been.

Logging all the tape was a major pain and a major project. My partner Hisako helped here too. :-)

From there, we went through the tape logs and highlighted what we thought were key sequences. I storyboarded some of them on the corkboard in my office. And then I made some rough sequences and patched them together.

Right now, I'm outputting and distributing the various rough cuts to standard-def DVDs. I am editing in HDV and only downconverting at the final moment in Compressor. The resolution of the standard def DVDs that I'm burning isn't quite as high as I'd like -- I understand that there is some magic involved in getting Compressor to downconvert HDV into SD properly. In any case, I'm excited that the latest version of Compressor handles burning HD formats to DVD-Rs for playback on HD-DVD drives, so as soon as the prices drop on those, I'll implement that into my output formats.

One of the people on DV-L posted a question about what to do when shooting in the very cold. These are my notes based on my experience in Minnesota and Hokkaido, Japan:

There are two issues involved: cold temperature and condensation. Cameras can handle the cold fairly well as long as they get sufficient battery power, what they can't handle is condensation which will get on the lens, muck up the tape heads, film, or media.

In Minnesota, I found that acclimating the camera to the external temperature was better than trying to keep it warm. If I stuck the camera inside my jacket, it would get condensation from the moisture near my body.

As long as you have the camera on and running, the internal electronics will keep it warm. I'd use an extra large size battery because the capacity will go down when it's cold. Also, keep the spare battery near your body where it's warm -- the high humidity won't bother it as much as the camera lens.

Before you go inside after being outside for while, stick your camera in a ziplock bag or even a plain plastic bag. Tie it shut. And then bring the camera in. That will prevent condensation from building on the camera because of the temperature differential.

If you're really worried, you can get an underwater case for your camera and use that -- it'll protect against bumps, shocks, and humidity changes. But remember to always acclimate the camera to the current temperature before opening the case -- or you'll be back to square one!

Karen

We had an Ethnography and Social Theory colloquium today on the topic of organizational software for the field. Several graduate students and one of the senior faculty presented. Here are my very rough notes.

Allison Alexy's (Mac-based) suggestions for organizing your life / fieldnotes:

• 43Folders -- organizational ideology
• OmniOutliner Pro -- list making
• Sente -- bibliographic database
• RapidWeaver -- website development
• SuperDuper! -- backup software
• LaunchBar -- application launcher
• ScanSnap scanner -- going paperless
• PDFShrink -- PDF editing
• PDFlab -- PDF editing
• Allison has an excellent list of fieldnote-taking software on her blog

Professor William Kelly's (Windows) suggestions:

• Biblioscape -- bibliographic database
• Window's Explorer Plus -- file management
• WhizFolders -- note taking and fieldnote database
• Dragon Naturally Speaking -- speech recognition / transcription software, great for taking reading-notes, transcribing dictated fieldnotes, etc.

Gavin Whitelaw's field tips and solutions:

• tupperware in the field -- for organizing/carrying gadgets (esp. post-9/11)
• Mini-mini-tripod -- esp. for taping shows off streaming sites
• Using your digital camera as a portable scanner / portable photocopier, taking photos of texts etc.
• Quick-release for digital camera on tripod
• Two small digital cameras -- one to work, and one as a backup; with large LCD preview/review screen (to show informants photos or to review on the train, etc.)
• Portable USB or Firewire back-up drive -- to backup fieldnotes in the field, every night (alternately, use your iPod)
• iPhoto / Portfolio / Lightroom, or other photo management software -- be sure to tag all your photos, but try to keep the number of keywords to a minimum, less than 30 if possible
• Using digital camera as another form of fieldnotes -- take photos of everything and everything
• TypePad -- personal and public blogging, personal/private blog as an easy way to clip articles, tag information, etc.
• Take screenshots / print to PDF of any website you've seen and want to keep (since websites change constantly)

Other topics:

• Cpen 20 - pen scanner, to scan documents on the fly
• Solar power / AC-inverters for places without power
• Copywrite note taking software
• WordPress, Joomla, or MediaWiki -- content management systems -- blogging software that can be reused as fieldnote management
• Zotero -- firefox extension that almost works like a bibliographic reference

My own suggestions:

• Canon LIDE scanner -- small, lightweight scanner, easily bookbaggable
• Sharp Zaurus -- small microportable computer, can easily get recharged

Feel free to post other suggestions as well!

I mocked up the DVD jacket cover for my forthcoming film, Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan.

Comments and thoughts more than welcome! Also, let me know if you or your organization would like to arrange for a screening. I'm doing several this semester. The film is still officially still in editing, I'm hoping to open it in January at a film festival.

Darn it if I don't have some flickering from fluorescent lights in indoor footage from Japan -- shot with both my Canon XL-H1 and Sony HDR-HC1. This was both in footage shot in 60i and 30f -- with shutterspeeds of 1/30 and 1/60.

What is going on? While the United States is 60hz and Western Japan (where I normally stay) is also 60hz, eastern Japan including Tokyo and Hokkaido is 50hz. This means that I should have used a frequency multiple of 25/50 instead of 30/60. So the best shutterspeeds for avoiding flicker were 1/25, 1/50, or 1/100.

Let that be a lesson to me.

After much vacillating, I decided to get the Edirol R-09 digital recorder to record audio in the field. The other choice was the MicroTrack 24/96. The R-09 and the MicroTrack are almost identical in size, weight, and price. See my previous blog entries on this topic (here or here or here). The main factors were:

• Replaceable AA batteries rather than proprietary
  
• Built-in mic (one less thing to lose)
  
• Time/date stamping
  

There are some notes and a more extensive chart comparing the two after the jump.