A Taste of Home

Last night was America Night here in Summerge Four #102 (a.k.a. my oddly named apartment). It was a big day for football, with the Patriots going up against the Jets in the first round of the NFL playoffs, which was a game I was really interested in watching. I've subscribed to the radio broadcast service at nfl.com, but football isn't something that translates that well from tv to radio. Football is all about action, and it's a kind of action that is best experienced visually.

So I went online and downloaded a media player that streams live tv from the states, since you can imagine football is not the most popular sport here in Japan and thus not on the tube here. And then the wait began... I had to wait until 3 a.m. for the game to begin, but I embraced it as the finale of my New Years vacation, since it's back to work for us on Wednesday. And what is one to do while watching football on a Sunday (actually it was already Monday here)?? Drink beer of course. And so I did.

So here I was drinking and watching football in the middle of the night, and it was good. I haven't watched American tv since I was home last summer, and I'd forgotten the power of network advertising. Commercial upon commercial for McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut! It made me crave greasy goodness in the worst way. I had to dip into my secret stash of Slim Jim's that I keep on hand for when my body periodically screams for saturated fat. We actually have most of the fast food chains from the states here in Japan. McDonald's is the most ubiquitous (pronounced Makudonaludo here), with KFC trailing right behind it. In the city you'll find the odd Wendy's, though I haven't seen any Burger King's. Strangely enough, Mr. Donut is still alive and well here in Japan, which is funny because I can't remember the last time I saw one of those in the states. And I read that the first Krispy Kreme shop recently opened in Tokyo.

And so, after watching the Patriots pull out a nice win, I took out the trash and went to bed around 7 a.m. this morning. It's been a long time since I've stayed up all night, and luckily the next Pats game is in California next Sunday. The good news about that is that it will be on around 9 in the morning; unfortunately I'll be working, so I'll only be able to keep track of the game sporadically.

Interestingly, while football isn't very popular here, it does exist. There is actually a Japanese football league here named the X-League. The X-League has been around for more than 30 years, though I just recently discovered it a few weeks ago when I happened to catch it's version of the Super Bowl, which I kid you not, is called the Rice Bowl.

Chieko and I went to our friends' house for lunch yesterday, and since they live just a few minutes from the beach, we swung by on our way home. The wind was blowing an easy and steady 50 mph, and there were big angry waves as far as the eye could see. We're due for snow all week, just waiting for it to start falling.