It’s half past 1 in the morning on Monday night, and I just watched the Prince (or whatever he’s called now, that hieroglyphic thing?) halftime show for Super Bowl XLI. That’s right, Nippon TV, channel 10, is airing the Super Bowl here in Japan. It started a bit after midnight, which of course isn’t the greatest of time slots, but since I can’t imagine anyone in Japan is watching this except for Americans, I guess you can’t be picky. I already knew that the Colts won, since when I woke up this morning and checked Facebook and AIM away messages, pretty much everyone had something about it. I didn’t mind the spoiler. It’s not like I’m especially a huge American football fan, but I usually try to at least watch the Super Bowl. Actually, the last football game I actually watched was last year’s Super Bowl, but that makes sense because I’ve pretty much been in Japan since August.
I am primarily watching the game with the original English play-by-play, but it’s interesting to switch to the Japanese one every once in a while via the dual audio button on my remote control. It sounds like a pretty young and excited announcer in the lead, an older guy, and a really annoying chick. Seriously, think Iron Chef and that’s the group who seems to be announcing this football game in Japanese. It’s pretty different from the English one. The on-screen graphics and everything are also done in Japanese, so that’s cool. My TV is old or something and strange, so it always cuts off about an inch around the border of everything. Something like it’s zoomed in a bit too much. Anyways, this has never really been a problem, but right now while watching this game I can’t see the score at the top of the screen, making it a bit annoying.
My other bit of a complaint is that the Super Bowl commercials aren’t included with this Japanese broadcast of the game. Of course this makes complete sense as well, but I’m still a bit disappointed that I don’t get to see the overpriced and elaborately planned Super Bowl commercials along with the game. Luckily, YouTube has all of them uploaded, so I’ll watch those sometime soon. I wonder if the companies had to pay YouTube anything to get the commercials online. I’m thinking no, since they would end up online anyway, but since YouTube does such a good job spreading videos and stuff virally, there will probably be so many more impressions (and re-viewings) from YouTube than with the actual broadcast.
Going to watch the rest of the game and then sleep. It was a long, fun day off spent in Makuhari and Chiba.
