karaoke

As many people know, karaoke is a huge pastime in Japan and an incredibly popular and usually cheap activity for young people to do as groups or dates, etc.

We're in Japan.

Therefore, we had to try it at least once.

The majority of our group biked out about a half mile to a rather dingy looking building with a faulty sign blinking カ ラ オ ケ (ka ra o ke) into the night. Seemed legitimate enough, so we quickly scrambled in. Inside was a very chic yet homely conglomeration of American inspired Japanese culture and 5 very startled looking young Japanese employees behind the front bar. We brokenly asked for a room for 9 people and ordered drinks to start off the night (whereas some people took advantage of the fact that the drinking age in this country is 20, I ordered a ginger ale and was quite happy for the remainder of the evening).

Once that was completed, we were shown down a narrow hallway with doors with lit up dingy numbers above them, around a corner and past some more doors until we were stopped and let in a door on the left. Inside was stuffed a huge flat screen tv, speakers to the ceiling, a table and a booth surrounding it. I wasn't sure how we were supposed to fit in this already very full room, but we bowed our heads in thanks to the employee who had shown us in, and slid into the booth. It was great, there was a menu with great Japanese and American snacks that you could order, song books and a little electronic tablet to search for the music you wanted to sing to on. Only problem? It was all in Japanese. Hard Japanese, the kind with all of the kanji you've never seen before in it. Being the crafty college students that we are, and so smart that we are, we just kept pressing buttons until we figured it out and got to the singing.

Here are a few choice videos I managed to record (that blogger would let me upload)

There were classic songs like The Beatles and Eric Clapton, English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean songs, and even songs from the recent Disney movie, Tangled! It was so nice to unwind with everyone like that for a night, just laughing away and eating delicious food. Basically, it was more than I could have ever expected, a ton of fun, and I am dead set on doing it a handful more times before my time in Japan is up.