Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosyste ...

to traverse multiple communities both in physical space and within the globalized social and virtual space of the Internet.

These changes necessitate rethinking how anthropologists approach both data collection and analysis and the modes of interaction and transportation that we use to engage in ethnography. Like the people I know in Kanegasaki and its surrounding towns, when I am there for research purposes I drive from place to place, moving not only through various villages (and, yes, there are still many compact and tightly knit villages in Japan) but also through towns and cities throughout the Tōhoku region. It is not unusual to start my day driving to neighboring Ōshū or further south to the temple complex in Hiraizumi, with stops at restaurants or to pick up groceries on the way home. When I return to the US, I continue to stay in touch with my friends in the region through email and Facebook, which was not possible when I started systematic fieldwork in 1994—at that time, the only contact I had with residents occurred when I was physically there or through the occasional letter. Ethnographic research for me today no longer involves heading to my field site, living there for a year or more, and returning to write up my results, although I do believe that remains the best way to obtain robust ethnographic data that allows for nuanced analysis and interpretation. For the most part as of 2019, ethnographic research is for me an ongoing endeavor that includes not only regular visits to the region I study but also technological innovations such as Google Maps to explore the area while sitting at my office computer in Austin. In a sense, I can be in Kanegasaki or any other part of Japan whenever I want by simply calling up Google Maps and shifting the perspective to surface level, which allows me to actually move through images of the town captured at a particular point in time. And if I see something interesting, I can drop a friend an email and ask about the object displayed on my screen or even dial her up on Skype or Facetime to have a conversation about it.

The issue here, however, is not only how I as an anthropologist can easily access my field site to collect data. The important point is that my