KA-RA-O-KE story time

Two days ago I went to a Japanese graduation party (only no students were involved) at a local bar. There were about 16 people there (about 10 of them spoke English and were foreigners, non Japanese...YEAAAA, lucky me). Lacking funds, for reasons already explained, the others were nice enough to take care of me and buy a beer and rounds of darts (interesting combo). This seemed to be just the warm-up and about 3 hours later (around 11pm) we all walked over to ManekiNeko Karaoke.

You pay by the hour/person, so of course having 12 people we only paid for 9 (cheap bastards). You can pick the all you can drink soda package or the all you can drink alcohol package. Again, someone was nice enough to pick up my tab (not sure who). I'm sure at some point I'll have to find a way to pay everyone back.

The room was about 8x14 or so with two long couches lining the side walls, a VERY large table in the stretched the length of the couches and a big screen tv at the front. You use a hand-held device to select songs. The device is hooked to a sattelite system that downloads new songs. You can select songs by typing in the band name, song name, or by genre. Once you pick your song you send it to the TV. The tv keeps a running list and order of the songs. The goal is to pick songs that everyone will want to sing along to. If everyone can't sing along, they don't pay attention. You can bring in your own beer and food (or order). Of course being cheap bastards they brought in their own alcohol and food (about 15 cans of beer, a bottle of wine, and some smirnoff). I had an icy...but I think someone added something to it, because it tasted kind of potent.

For about 2 hours they did nothing but sing and jump around (literally jumping, dancing, shouting yelling). About an hour in a couple of them were so drunk they couldn't finish their sentences and kept falling over, so I started passing off the alcohol to another American who then hid it on his side of the couch (don't need anyone puking on us).

I think the point is to be the worst singer or maybe the most enthusiastic singer, because no one seemed to notice that most of them couldn't carry a tune to save their lives. This of course made it a lot easier for me to willing join in and sing a few songs of my own. I tried to pick songs that I knew someone would sing louder than me during and by golly it worked. I don't think that I ever was actually able to hear my voice at ANY point during ANY song (even if I was the only one with a microphone). Score a point for me!

So, if your ever in Japan. Make a point to go to Karaoke with the locals. Maybe you can approach random people and ask, "karaoke ni ikimashou" (let's go to karaoke). They'll either agree or just assume you're a crazy foreigner (which doesn't really matter 'cause the odds are you won't ever see them again).