Comfortable Disorientation

Home

We're in the process of trying to make all the pieces of the jigsaw fit together in order that we can move home.

We've had to face people rejecting the place that embodies home for us as not being right or good enough for them - which hurts even though I know it's silly to take it personally.  At the same time we've been nosing around other people's homes - kind of like the day job, but the houses are generally tidier - while building up a collaborative vision for what we want 'home' to look and feel like for us over the next few years (we're expecting it to involve an extra family member - due February). 

So when I caught Ikea's new TV ad this morning it really touched a nerve. 

Then tonight I stumbled upon the UK at Home website,  a collaborative photo journalism project being conducted over the next week exploring the richness and diversity of home in the UK. There's going to be a TV programme and a great, big, juicy book coming out of this as well as an online collection - exciting huh?

Well it excited me, so much so that I almost didn't spot that Ikea are the sponsor.

Tokyo

Stumbling on an old friend in a new setting. I seem to bump into copies of Louise Bourgois' Maman all over the place.

Sometimes my job rocks! I'm in Tokyo, a city that has always fascinated me, so much so that I always forget I've never actually been here before. And I'm researching haircare, possibly my all time favourite research subject (when you talk to a woman about her hair you are talking about something that is fundamentally tied up with her sense of who she is; hair is deeply emotional).

In my two and a half day visit I am mostly working or sleeping, there is very little time to sightsee or explore. But that doesn't matter because on this trip I get to visit consumers in their homes as well as so I'm exploring suburbs and parts of the city visitors rarely get to see. So far I've visited: a very wealthy, where the homes are relatively palatial and the current vogue classical european style home decor, and a Eastern suburb hanging out in the apartments of trendy, young, working girls.

My guide round the city is my japanese counterpart Makiko. one of the great things about doing international research is hanging out with other professional people watchers, who generally make amazing cultural interpreters. Makiko has travelled Europe and spent a year at Lancaster Uni, so we are able to swap observations and puzzle over differences. A 15 minute discussion about differences in umbrella behaviour and etiquette is enlightening on a far grander scale than the everyday subject matter would suggest.

I'm very, very lucky to call this work.