One of the problematic things about the extreme time difference between Misawa and the States is the crazy time sporting events come on TV. Thankfully, AFN plays a good amount of sports, award shows, and other significant broadcasts. You just have to set an alarm clock in order to see them live.
This really hit home this past weekend when we realized that the Super Bowl was going to begin at 8 am Monday morning. =^O Thankfully, the base gave everyone (except the school kids!) the day off to support the morale of our troops. So we all gathered at a friend's house off base and watched the game while eating our way through an awesome breakfast buffet.
Another major draw-back to watching the Super Bowl overseas is that AFN doesn't play normal commercials! We were seriously bummed about missing out on the best part of the whole broadcast. But thankfully one of our friends has a sling-box and we were able to hook up his computer to our host's TV. Basically a sling-box is a device you hook up to a TV back in the States, and it gives you the ability to access all of those cable channels from a computer anywhere in the world. That way you can watch cable shows through streaming video over the internet. The quality is not great, but it was good enough to see the commercials. So we would switch back and forth between the higher-quality broadcast of the game on TV and the computer input for the commercials. It was awesome!
I may end up doing something similar in a couple of weeks for the Oscars. We're a bit out of touch with current movies, but just like the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards are a big deal in our household and I'm gonna watch them - even if I have to get up early on a Monday to do so!
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