ホーム, an epiphany

Last night I was playing that Japanese DS game that I got from Yoshie. One of the mini-games I've come across gives you a hint and some katakana characters, and you have to arrange them to form a word. I was playing that game and one of the hints was something like 「危ないですから、白い線を越えないでください。」And the katakana word turned out to be 「プラットホーム」。

I've discovered all kinds of new words with this game, but this one in particular shed light on the mystery of ホーム for me. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I always wondered why the train platforms were called "home." I never pieced together that it's because "fo" and "ho" are the same sound in Japanese and that ホーム is short for プラットホーム.

There's no place like fome.