Its fans are legion, and its patrons almost exclusively men. Debates about Ramen Jiro rage across chat rooms, message boards, and spill over to the streets of Tokyo. Jiro is the Sarah Palin of ramen joints. You either love Ramen Jiro or you despise it. There are no ambivalent attitudes to be found regarding this Tokyo mini empire. The queues

Jerry Sandusky’s autobiography is called Touched. The customer reviews are the best part.  One review is titled “Jerry touched the lives and genitals of many”, another reads: 100% false advertising by Mr. Sandusky. Not a single page in this book “touches” on how to appropriately gain the trust of young, at-risk boys, and then use that trust to perpetrate horrifying

Here was the review I was going to write, but didn’t: Apparently, among movie go-ers there is an unquenchable thirst for movies about Seth Rogan nurturing a friend through a serious medical condition.  The actual condition varies (and they get more complicated, from Katherine Heigl’s pregnancy in Knocked Up, through Adam Sandler’s acute myeloid leukemia in Funny People, and now

Long-time readers of this blog (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) will remember I mentioned that Elizabeth Warren joined the Choir Invisible just two months ago. An Elizabeth Warren, the one better known by her married name: Elizabeth Warren “Betty” Ford.  I was distantly aware that there was another Elizabeth Warren.  She oversaw the TARP thingee and then was Special Advisor for

On September 11th — that September 11th of course, the only September 11th — my brother, my sister, and my two nieces were in lower Manhattan, but I, sitting in my office 3000 miles away, didn’t know that. My brother worked on Long Island; I had some vague notion that my sister’s office was in Park Slope; no one had

I bought the book partly because I needed something to read, partly because I am interested in the subject matter, but mostly because I am a sucker for pretty Asian women.  Most of the vendors around Angkor Wat are children, anywhere from six to 15 years old, enthusiastically hawking t-shirts and scarves and statuary and guidebooks and tablecloths and soft-drinks.

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, something from a movie, ruins in a jungle clearing, ominous and overgrown with lianas. Pythons and huge furry spiders. Instead it looked like what it was: a popular, well-tended public building, like the White House or the Louvre. The grounds were manicured and roads around it had thorough signage in several languages.

I got to Mo Chit bus depot exactly at 3am. The cabbie had offered to take me for a flat 200 baht but I insisted on the meter. 97 baht, plus a 45-baht toll, plus a 50-baht tip for the guy, so I saved 8 baht, almost almost a quarter US. The depot is very quiet at 3 in the

There’s many, many different styles of ramen in the land of the rising sun. But there are only four major classifications; Shio (salt), Shōyu (soy sauce), Miso (soybean paste) and Tonkotsu (pork bone). My personal runaway favorite is Tonkotsu ramen. A specialty ramen that bears its origins from Hakata-ku, Fukuoka on the Southern island of Kyūshū. Of course, I’ve never actually been

BART To/From SFO Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is one of my favorite options to get to/from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and downtown San Francisco. Even with a lot of luggage  in tow the trip is relatively hassle free, and fairly convenient if your destination in the city is relatively close to one of BART’s eight subway stations in