About me:
Name: deftoned
Age: 27
Location: Northern California

I’m just some dude who really appreciates anime and all things related to it. I’m just a fan like any other who just happens to write about it online. I like to consider myself a born-again anime fan. I began watching anime seriously when I first started college back in 1999, but it slowed down dramatically when I was in graduate school. The born again part comes came in around the middle of 2005 when I started watching anime again much more frequently and much more intensely. I will watch pretty much anything and everything, but have a particular predilection for slice-of-life, generic romantic-comedy harem shows, and mahou shoujo. There really isn’t anything I won’t watch… except Fushigi Yuugi. I have no idea how I managed to actually watch that entire series (OVAs and all). I want that time back…

I am trained in social science technical writing and research, so my writing style is more on the technical side than the creative side. At least grammatical mistakes are at a minimum. I have been criticized in the past for being too verbose, but that’s just my training. I am one who believes if you say something, you need to back it up with support and an explanation for the most part. Outside of the world of anime I have interests in baseball, basketball, psychology, and music, so those aspects often times pop up in my writing.

Some of my favorite series include: Ai Yori Aoshi, Angelic Layer, Aria, Azumanga Daioh, Card Captor Sakura, Da Capo, Full Metal Panic, Gate Keepers, Genshiken, Hidamari Sketch, Honey & Clover, Kaleido Star, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou, Macross, Mahoromatic, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, Maison Ikkoku, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Martian Successor Nadesico, Onegai Sensei, Rurouni Kenshin, Sailormoon, School Rumble, To Heart, Top wo Nerae 1 & 2, Vandread, Video Girl Ai.

About this blog:
I have always had this fascination with blogging. I don’t posses the technical prowess of most webpages and/or blogs out there, but I have dabbled in very basic web design over the last 10 years. Back whenever the original Tea Shop BeLoved was up on an old Geocities site (around 2000-2001), I ran a journal where I basically rambled about my daily happenings (mainly about my college days and video games). Tea Shop BeLoved morphed into a handful of various titles, but eventually settled on “Yellow Sweater,” which was around sporadically until sometime in 2005. The webpage blogging eventually carried over to LiveJournal and eventually Blogger, where my original anime blog “Ramble, Ramble” was founded.

I did the “anime name – episode number” form of blogging for a few months, but it was short-lived. Because I was still in the middle of graduate school, writing episode summaries every other night became too difficult and too tedious, but worst of all not fun. However, a few months later I had an itch that needed scratching, but instead of jumping back into the anime blog community, I kept to myself and rebuilt this new anime blog titled Tea Shop BeLoved.

Only recently have I thrown myself and this blog back into the fire. This utterance of Tea Shop BeLoved has been going strong for over 1 year now, and I don’t foresee it slowing down (at least not too much)! Not much has changed. I still spend too much time thinking about anime… and still despise Fushigi Yuugi. I’m sorry Fushigi Yuugi fans.

About “Tea Shop BeLoved”:
The title Tea Shop Beloved comes from episode 9 of the original To Heart, one of my all-time favorite series. “Tea Shop BeLoved” was the name of the tea shop that Akari and Hiroyuki’s class ran during the cultural festival. Likewise, “Yellow Sweater” was in reference to episode 8, where Akari wears a yellow and orange cardigan, while she and Hiroyuki prepared for their winter exams (and Shiho was home sick). I always liked those names, so they stuck.

About the current header:
The image is of Miyamoto Iroha from Sumomomo Momomo.