Superbowl Monday!

This was my first Superbowl overseas, and it turned out to be so much fun! Because of the time difference, the Superbowl was live on Monday morning here in Japan. The military members even got the day off work, although schools and other businesses were open as usual.

The base had a party for the Superbowl, and a bunch of guys from Jeff's work planned on meeting and watching the game there. I jumped at the chance. I'm a bigger football fan than Jeff is, and I really only watch the Bears... but we were both thrilled to cheer on anyone playing against the Packers ;)

The game started live at 8:30am, so the ballroom opened at 6am with a breakfast buffet. Oh, and beer. They had all sorts of free prizes set up to give away, and had a couple large screen TV's and a huge projection screen for us to watch the game.

We even had professional cheerleaders! Apparently cheerleaders from other NFL teams often go overseas to help cheer on with the military members. I was suprised they were there, but Jeff said he's had cheerleaders every time he's watched the game overseas. He's been overseas for four Superbowls, so he knows more than I do! This year we had two Cardinals cheerleaders who were nice and liked to flirt, so the single guys were very happy with them.

Here's one of the cheerleaders teaching one of Jeff's co-workers a cheer during a commercial break.


(It was dark in the ballroom, so pictures were tough!)

Unfortunately, since we watched the game on Armed Forces Network, we missed all the great commercials! (Luckily they were all over the news the next day, so I saw the most talked about ones) To keep us occupied during the commercials, they had all sorts of little games for us to play. They did football trivia, races, and other little things. I played a game where we put on dark sunglasses and dug through a kiddie pool full of footballs for a couple footballs that had "go fight win" written on them in permanent marker. The picture above is a guy from Jeff's work learning a cheer. (I have a video of his "cheer", I'll have to upload and post it soon! It'll make you laugh!) They had a race where wives sat in inflatable chairs and the husbands had to push the wife across the dance floor first. They gave away free t-shirts, coolers, and all sorts of little things.

They also had cheap beer. As soon as we sat down at the table, the guys were asking when we were going to start drinking! Since Jeff was driving, I got to indulge a little. It was odd having beer with breakfast, but it was such a fun atmosphere that you forgot what time of day it was. I hadn't met too many of the people from Jeff's work yet, but it was easy to have a lot of fun with guys at our table. We were busy bashing the Packers and making fun of the Packer's fans in the room...and at our table. I kept joking with Jeff that those AS guys (his rate) are dangerous to hang out with!

Here's proof:



Not to worry, everyone had safe rides home or were within walking distance of their barracks. And despite the pile on our table, no one got too out of control. I did come home and take a very long nap though!

Overall, it was a blast. The outcome was disappointing, since I'm from Chicago, but we were having so much fun as a group that it was easy enough to ignore the WI win. I missed the commercials and junk food that go along with evening Superbowls, but it was still a lot more fun than what I expected. Not bad for my first Superbowl overseas!

We also came home with a bunch of free goodies!




I also learned that the bars overseas give free fountain drinks to the DD's. Jeff got a free cup for being a designated driver, and enjoyed free Coke through the game. I guess they do that at almost every overseas on base bar, but I thought it was pretty cool!





This weekend, we're getting together with some of the people from work again to go bowling. Should be fun. Jeff and I are also hoping we can get out into town and start exploring soon!