Herro Flom Japan (Podcasts & Videocasts)
Podcasts & videocasts from an American expat living the life of the typical Japanese salaryman.



My Kids and Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories (Nov 4)
I have two boys, 8 and 11 years old. Tony, the 11 year old, loves video games. He has a Sony PSP which he plays a lot. Far too often in my wife's opinion. He's constantly blowing his allowance on buying and selling games at a second hand store down the street from our house. [...]


Gayle "Obama is an Arab" Quinnel: End of story? (Oct 28)
Sorry for being so political all the time, but I'm genuinely obsessed with this election. Like, I need to check myself into a twelve-step program. If Obama wins, you'll read about me in the papers for exuberantly and singlehandedly overturning cars in Tokyo and setting them on fire. On the other hand, if McCain wins, you'll read [...]


Unknown arm-twister to House: "Pass the bailout bill or else" (Oct 6)
Democrat Brad Sherman of California last week said on the floor of the House of Representatives that "someone" (he won't say exactly who) threatened that if the House didn't pass the revised Wall Street bailout bill, the US could be facing martial law. Whoever threatened martial law isn't bluffing. As you may know, on October 1 [...]


Horse Meat (Sep 27)



My good deed for today (Sep 16)
I'm supposed to blog when something interesting happens to me, right? This morning as I was passing through Shinjuku Station, I saw a woman take a dive down a short flight of slippery stairs and lie crumpled on the wet ground with a quickly expanding pool of blood under her head. (That freaked me out.) I've [...]


Open mic gaffe: Conservative pundits speak their minds on Palin (Sep 4)
I'm going to go out on a limb and declare this clip will become part of US Presidential election history, like that humiliating photo of Michael Dukakis driving a tank. Huffington Post has a transcript of the dialog if it's difficult to hear. My favorite quotes are Peggy Noonan saying "It's over," and, "The most [...]


WHAT in GOD'S NAME was McCain Thinking? (Aug 31)
Seriously, I get heart palpitations when I imagine Sarah Palin as second in line to a 73 year old president whose father and grandfather both died before age 72. She's in waaaay over her head. Three years ago she was the ceremonial figurehead for a small town in Alaska. Three years from now she could [...]


Squid Chips (Aug 22)
It's Friday, I'm starting on my way home and I was hungry for a snack so I bought a bag of tempura fried squid. They look like potato chips or some other salted carbohydrate snack. Apparently, if you're not eating them, they don't smell so nice. I was eating them out of the bag when [...]


Monkey on the loose in Shibuya Station (Aug 21)
Don't know how it got there, but it sure livened things up yesterday. Sponsored By: GD Language Programs Virtual Fair


Street view for Tokyo on Google Maps (Aug 6)
As is already possible for other major cities around the world, you can now use Google Maps to virtually drive around Tokyo and enjoy 360 degree views of the cityscape. Here's Shibuya Crossing.


Sunni vs. Shi'ite: Learning the difference (Jul 28)
Here's how I keep them straight in my head. I start with Iran by remembering the phrase, "She is from Iran." Iran is Shi'ite. I recall the mistake McCain made saying that Iran was training al Qaeda. That is incorrect because al Qaeda is the opposite, Sunni. Osama Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, which makes the country [...]


Subliminal Advertising (Jul 25)



Obama, McCain and The Surge (Jul 23)
First, let me appease those who come here for news about my family and me. Last Sunday while Tony had a soccer game, I took Andy to a local 子ども会 and brought my new camera along. (Seeing as how I bought the thing, I ought to use it once in a while.) A kodomo-kai isn't [...]


Tokyo is back to normal (Jul 10)
As of yesterday evening, the omnipresent police have completely disappeared, put back into cryogenic storage, ground up into tasty hamburger meat or maybe they were never police to begin with, and they've been given back their tattered homeless rags. It's a good thing too. By the last day they were all looking pretty bored. I started [...]


Mainichi shuts down WaiWai (Jul 8)
This is pretty old news by now, but I just found out about it. I don't spend much time surfing websites about Japan. When I still lived in the US, I hardly ever followed local news either. I've always been a Time/Newsweek/US News & World Report kinda guy. For years and years, the English language website [...]


Tokyo Lockdown (Jun 30)
Twitter friends were right, the extra security is due to the G8 Summit in Hokkaido. It says so on these out-of-order garbage cans. Mystery solved.


Something's up in Tokyo this morning (Jun 30)
I noticed a policeman posted at the exit of the Ginza line in the Aoyama-ichome station this morning who's normally not there. He was watching people carefully and had his baton in his hand, in addition to the pistol strapped to his belt. Then when I passed by the garbage cans near the exit of [...]


Suicide in Japan (Jun 20)
A few months ago when I was posting random tidbits of stuff from the Japanese news media to this blog, I came across an article about a group suicide that happened in a hotel less than an hour from where I live. Three people–two men and a woman–packed into a bathroom, sealed the door with [...]


A Family Update (Jun 9)
Andy last week decided that he really wants a dog, and he wants to buy it with 50,000 to 100,000 yen of his own money, made 100-150 yen at a time by helping around the house. He has suddenly become the model son, helping out washing dishes, vacuuming, and housecleaning without being asked, but extorting [...]


This guy keeps writing me. (May 19)
I came upon this article by accident. (I hope you don't mean that literally. -ed.) Don't you realize that although you did your civic duty, you also stopped the practiced skills of an art form. Chikan can indeed be considered an art form. Where else can one find throughout history that an entire culture has tolerated [...]


Four Day Weekend, Day 4 (May 6)
In the morning, Tony and Andy played together. In the afternoon, Tony had soccer practice and Andy played with his loudmouth friends. While watching him and his friends play together, it made me realize that Grand Theft Auto is the adult equivalent of smashing trucks together on the living room floor. Me, I scanned more photos [...]


Four Day Weekend, Day 2 (May 5)
On Saturday morning (day 1) I drove my wife to work so we could have the car to go to Navel Park. That was the plan, but when I got home I crawled back into bed and didn't wake up until the crack of 1pm. I felt refreshed, but guilty for shooting our plans for [...]


Four Day Weekend, Day 1 (May 3)
It turns out we have a four day weekend, not a three day one. Saturday was Constitution Memorial Day (kenpou kinen-bi), today is Childrens' Day (kodomo no hi), tomorrow is Greenery Day (midori no hi) and Tuesday is a freebie because two of the holidays were over the weekend. That freebie didn't show up on [...]


Our new washer/dryer (May 1)
Previous Next Close Gaze at the splendor of [...]


Welcome back feed readers (May 1)
I just realized my RSS feeds have been broken for probably a long, long time. I think they're fixed now. Sponsored By: Global Daigaku