It was a long weekend in Japan, so I ventured off to Guam for 3 days of beach and ESPN. Guam is only a 3.5 hour flight south of Tokyo but a world away when it comes to sports. First of all, it's part of the United States; their motto is "Where America's Day Begins". It's certainly disconcerting though, because it means that your evening sports are in the early morning. It's much the same as here in Japan (Guam is only an hour ahead) but the difference is that here, there are almost no live American sports on. In Guam, you've got ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN U, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc. So all the games are on live! But they're on while you are either sleeping or at the beach. Guam is 15 hours ahead of the east right now, so a 1 pm NFL game starts at 4 am. You can catch the end of the early games (I saw the two overtimes, including KC's win over Cincy) and then watch the late game which starts around 7:15. But by 9:00, you want to get out and catch some sun. At least SportsCenter is on in the evening, although it's the morning edition.
One of the other strange things about the time difference is watching Letterman at 11:00 on Monday night. Of course, it's only 8 am in New York, so the Monday show hasn't even taped yet, so Guam gets Friday' show. It's just a bit weird watching Dave talk about the upcoming weekend when its already happened.
Live Sports
There's not much in the way of live sports on the island. There's really only high school games, which were common but not worth visiting. There is a baseball league which was covered in the Wall Street Journal but there were no games on while I was there. I did visit Paseo Stadium which looked rather old but there was no way in. That's too bad, as tickets were only $2. I'll keep my eyes open for some information on the league to see if it's worth a short visit next year.
Best,
Sean
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