teddysmith - Theodore Daniel Smith

The Disclaimer: The following weblog is personal and possibly fictional, the views expressed herein are not necessarily the view of anyone except my own.

The Man: Hyperenergetic, strange, small and confused. I'm an American who was born in Canada to a half-Jew, half-German lawyer from cowtown AB and a Swiss-Irish farmgirl from Wisconsin. I was once desribed to myself as a black man who's trapped in a small white man's body but thinks he's asian. To date, I have written one novel, but have yet to publish.

The Story: A lone mercenary wordsmith who's ironically become fed up with the English language decides to search for answers in a country where no one will understand my questions.

**Update! I'm online via air card!! You can also reach me at teddysmith@t.vodafone.ne.jp (my japan celly mail adress) or phone me at (itnl code 81) 908 479 6672.

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Joined on: June 3rd 2006
Last Login: July 26th 2008

Blog Entries: 92
Photos: 570
Recommended by 1

TB Code: [blogger=18123]
Status: BLOGGER

Blogs & Travel Journals

by teddysmith, order by Date newest first.

By teddysmith
July 18th 2008

謝り

Asia » Japan » Tokyo

“Ayamari” -It means “apology,” but the character can also mean “gratitude” or "refusal" depending on the context it's used in. Furthermore it is homonymous with 誤り—a mistake. Whether this multiplicity is a product of coincidental etomological evolution, or whether this is evidence of some deeper seeded origins behind of our modern compound-feelings is a question I am intellectually ill-prepared to gander on. It seems obvious to me though, even if largely inexplicable, there is a connection between these rather varied concepts. One of the maintstays of folk-wisdom and Hollywood hucksterism is the duplicity of our emotions. Love and hate, as it's [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
July 16th 2008

Tokyo--Dome Once Again

Asia » Japan » Tokyo

Hawks Ouendan
Assistors to the 2008 Kouryuusen (interleague) Championshis

She left early in the morning and I slept of the remnants of my hangover and any remain bitter taste of last night (June 21st) and then got up and got ready to go to the ball game. I threw on my Johjima Jersey and my Mariners cap because we were going down to the dome to cheer on Softbank Hawks. I don’t have a Softbank Jersey because A.) I don’t respect Sadaharu Oh (even though I should) and B.) I’m a Lions fan. A Lions fan cheering on the Hawks is roughly equivalent to a Yankees fan cheering on the [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
July 14th 2008

Simple Solutions to Everyday Problems

Asia » Japan » Tokyo

Skank Labratory

The next evening (Friday June 20th) I went down to Toyoda station for a long awaited trip to my favorite musical bar with my favorite musical girlfriend. Things had kind of ended on a flat note when we last split at Tachikawa station so I figured I’d take things off on a more dulcet tone and after a quick dinner with Takashima-kouhai (whose wife is now 8 month preggers I found out) I went out on a stroll over to Tamadaira market and sent an email asking her what she was wearing and what color was it. She said, her yellow [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
July 10th 2008

Back and Forth I go

Asia » Japan » Tokyo

Seibu School!
"Which jerseys will the team where in next month's Classic Throwback jersey series?"

The week that followed was comparatively uneventful. The girl this time is seemingly without a penchant for drama, which is something I’d have killed (Yuki?) for last year but my unfading anxiety of tranquility and belonging and my love of the hardship and struggle has made a virtual Atari 2600 of my brain and set my heart back and forth like an oscilloscopic pong ball. I made an abrupt call to Yuu on Friday (June 13th) and worked an invitation to her family dinner down in the Yokohama suburbs. Yamato station has to be the Cabaret club capital of Kantou. I [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
June 27th 2008

True Love or Authorial Integrity? - -What's a dumba$$ like me s'posed to do about it?

Asia » Japan » Tokyo » Kokubunji

The Rematch
"Play ball" at the Tokyo Dome.

I woke up on Inokashira park on Sunday June 8th at 6:10am. It was raining and my phone was ringing. Some of you might know this place as the spot where Eikichi Onizuka (22 years old, single) was always puking after being carried out of an Izakaya by Ryuji Danma and Azusa Fuyutsuki and then going on to give a rousing speeches about youth and the future. There was nothing inspiring about the last five hours I spent in this park. I wandered around Kichijouji station for over an hour looking for a capsule hotel and failing that anywhere dark and [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
June 25th 2008

Ibaraki and Other Distant Mythical Places.

Asia » Japan » Ibaraki

Bag's packed.
Ready to go baseball roadtripping

Monday, June 2nd. I was in a foul enough mood this week that I had found myself able to write satire again. I skipped Basketball on account of generally sh*tty weather, and a gererall sh*tty outlook on life and I found myself in a basement bar down by Hino station, trying to figure it all out while another old-drunk-hag bar mistress asking me questions about the weather in Canada. There was one other lone Hino-city barfly and chubby part-timer who had just come from her other job at the cake-store, and a barmaid who was deadlygorgeous but for a daringly conspicuous [View Full Entry]

The tallest building in dowtown Hitachinaka-shi

By teddysmith
June 18th 2008

Instant TravelBlog: Online Journalism Made Easy

Asia

Breath-Taking Headline Shot
e.g) "Nikko: Gateway to the Mysteries of Japanese History" --Notice how I pun on the physical and metaphorical uses of "Gateway"...genious

Let’s face it, writing is difficult, you have to think of sentences all the time, and make sure they’re intelligible and grammatically sound. Even with the lax standards of today’s internet audience, proper penmanship always seems to beyond some unattainable margin-lines that fade forever and forever as we move through cyberspace. An even worse problem is originality. Goodness gracious it just seems like in this day and age, everybody’s been everywhere and done everything. How's a self-labeled, slightly-rough-around-the-edges individualist supposed to garner attention on the internet when you have to go to all that effort to do it? I used to [View Full Entry]

The Mysterious Profundities of Ancient Asian Culture

By teddysmith
June 17th 2008

Crash.

Asia » Japan » Tokyo » Roppongi

Ted and Old Drunk Hag#2
The Second Drunkest Old Hag in Kanagawa.

Sunday I woke up on the nambu line two stops before the station I had got on. It was 8:16am, and I had boarded this train at about 6:30am…meaning my near-lifeless, booze-stinking corpse had been riding the train back and forth between Tachikawa and Kawasaki for nearly two hours. The severe pain of being seized me. I cringed and stretched spastically and then retreated to fetal helplessness. Clawing at my jeans for the Ibuprofens I’d stashed there the day before. In my right hand I was still clutching the bottle of Pocari Sweat and I tore open the screwcap violently and [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
June 13th 2008

“Yeah, so- -my girlfriend got hit by a car...”

Asia » Japan » Tokyo

I’ve doubled my efforts to bring this stylistic train-wreck of a travel journal up to date, but I’m still almost three weeks behind. It’s becoming a bit of a “2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics” style fiasco: A sprawling poorly organized series of events, shamelessly exploiting the aesthetics of indigenous culture and the rhetoric of the common human spirit, and costing way too much money while not advancing anywhere close to schedule. Also, You might’ve noticed that some batting stats have gone missing from the last entry. My Ace found out I was publishing them and threatened to refuse to pitch, a standoff [View Full Entry]

By teddysmith
June 6th 2008

The DL

Asia » Japan » Tokyo » Kokubunji

The Sun begins to set over Shinjuku

I met Soon-Mi on Saturday May 24th at Hitotsu-bashi Gakuen station and we walked back to her house to drop off her bike. It was Rainy and cold, but it had been warm and overcast when I had gotten on the train earlier that morning. She phoned Chiaki who was supposed to be going to dinner with us but was now apparently on the verge of death from a sudden inexplicable illness. It looked to be just the two of us that evening. I got rained-out while we were drying off in her place and then soaked again the minute we [View Full Entry]

TravelBlog » teddysmith

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teddysmith - Theodore Daniel Smith

Blogs & Travel Journals

謝り

Tokyo--Dome Once Again

Simple Solutions to Everyday Problems

Back and Forth I go

True Love or Authorial Integrity? - -What's a dumba$$ like me s'posed to do about it?

Ibaraki and Other Distant Mythical Places.

Instant TravelBlog: Online Journalism Made Easy

Crash.

“Yeah, so- -my girlfriend got hit by a car...”

The DL