I left to go to the city at 6:30 on Friday night. My dad and his travelling party had finally ended their long stretch of meetings and it was time to let loose and enjoy Japan. With the weekend in my sights I showered up and stepped onto the train at Toyota station with a bag full of clean clothes and about ￥8000 yen in bills and change. On Sunday morning I stepped onto the train the other way reeking of booze with a bag full of dirty clothes a new computer and a half bottle of Hennessey, a pocket [View Full Entry]

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I had finally gotten an email back from Masami on Saturday. She asked me if we could do Monday. My dad was coming to my office that day for meetings and it was possible that he might take me to dine with the company execs afterwards, so I told her to wait. She said Wednesday was also good. I told her to just give me a day. After the baseball match ended on Sunday, I found myself with very little to do in downtown Tokyo and about three hours to kill before I had to meet daddy to go to [View Full Entry]

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After sucessfully lying myself into a short date with Miss Takahashi, I left work earlier than usual to find an early dinner and grab my gym clothes. Tuesday night means b-ball and I came to play...or at least I thought I did. I wasn't there for very long before I got my shit wrecked severally, and I really could't get it back together- -In fact, I don’t even wanna talk about it. Long story short, while I was cramming for exams and celebrating after they were done during the lead-up to coming here, these guys had been practicing. I’ll get [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Pheonix, I spent four days at home doing as close to nothing as I possibly could. I packed my bags—a little lighter than I did last year—and got up late every day, read comics for three hours until my friends got home form work and drank. It seems like as the years pass, my list of friends waiting back home is getting smaller. Four days passed, with no drama worth noting. We went to the pub Thursday and then made sangria and sat remising in my kitchen. We drank Friday and stayed up ‘till 4 listening to Queen tapes. [View Full Entry]

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After another miserable season in the bigs, Teddy's packing his bags and heading out for another shot at glory in the J-league. Back by popular request this is the continuance of an experiment-went-horribly-awry in diary literature started last summer during a ten week stay in the Tokyo suburbs. Welcome to Memoirs of a Gaijin volume II. He swore to God, he wouldn't. He told himself and his friends he'd never weblog again, it wasn't worth the trouble it caused for himself and the people involved. But during the nine long month since he took that vow in writing, Ted came [View Full Entry]

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Monday. Date with Masami cancelled for the third f***ing time. I’m really starting to believe I’m being jerked around here. Believe you me, my patience with girls is rather extensive, but it was being chiseled thinner than a ramen noodle with this girl. She had promised she’d come to my Sayonara party tomorrow, I was tempted not to believe her, and making use of my sudden spare time I had a steak dinner with Hama-chan and then went for one last beer at the neighborhood pub with Kakeru. We talked about the future, about friends and about basketball. It’s tough to [View Full Entry]

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I immediately knew today was going to be a kickass day, because the first thing I saw when I opened my curtains Saturday morning was this thing→. After that I didn’t put a third thought to the whole ordeal last night. It was one of my turns. And the outcome can’t be helped any further than what I can do about it myself, which is my best, and that being done, is satisfactory to earn me peace of mind. It was stupid of me to fall for an older woman, I should’ve listened to Shakespeare’s advice. She’ll always only be a [View Full Entry]

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Friday, and so comes the last weekend I’ll spend in Japan for a year. That wasn’t something that really dawned on me until Monday really, and that’s essentially the nature of summer for me—what makes it so great—not worry about it till later, just let loose and ride till it’s time to get off or change stations. I met Ms. Kawakami at Hachiouji, and we walked the street and ate Takoyaki and Yakisoba and Lamune and talked about stuff. Man she was nervous. And you could see it in her stride. Tomorrow was her interview. She was vying for a sponsorship, [View Full Entry]

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So I started this week in a search for more Asians. Pulling favors from everyone I knew and asking around wherever I felt my intuitions tingling, I searched high and low for Louhaiyii’s could-be companions. After an exhausting day from the deadly combination of actually having to do real work and my extensive search efforts, I retired to the comfort of home and after an all too brief hour of sleep I awoke for my rightfully owed plate of hot dinner. In the cafeteria sat Lou next to a stranger. They were speaking in Chinese and sitting down wide-eyed with my [View Full Entry]

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I’m often accused of overthinking things, which is to a large extent the very truth of it all, but my defense is this: the overly analytical is my business. I’m a writer, it’s what I do. You never write anything without thinking it over a great deal, unless your name is Dan Brown, or JK Rowling…but now that I think about that those are two very wealthy and popular individuals, who also happen to have published several international best sellers and I haven’t sold peanuts in a ball park. Maybe I should stop thinking. Trade dignity for fame and trade self [View Full Entry]

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