[Intermission] Karaoke
I am too busy lately to spare my time with this blog. I can’t even update my mixi(my Japanese blog)! But I think thing will cool down from next month because I will start a new life, and find some more time to update here, really.
Having said that, I had some nice parties while I was working. Those guests came from mostly UK, and they are my good friends(non-otaku). When he arrived in Tokyo, we met up. And when his younger sister and her boyfriend arrived, we met up. And when they brought their friends to have fun, we met up. Oh no, I had more than three parties in the last three weeks.
Some of them have already been to Japan, and my friend even applied for a job to come again. I don’t know what made him do something like that, so I asked him and his younger sister why. Both answered, it’s for fun! And one of those things they love in particular is karaoke[カラオケ].
Accroding to the two, there is no karaoke booth in UK. So if they want to do karaoke, they have to go to a bar or a club. And you have to sing in front of many unknown people. Of course you have to order some drinks so it would be more expensive.
Meanwhile, if you pay about 650 yen(6$?) or so, you can sing for 7 hours with all-you-can-drink at a daytime. If you pay about 2,800 yen(25$?) or so, you can party down till dawn with all-you-can-drink including alchole. So when my friends come to Japan, they absolutely dash to a karaoke booth and have a party. When I had a party with them, I was engaged in ordering their drinks because they were so fast!
You think otakus are too shy to sing in front of anybody else? No, not so. Seemingly they are shy, but actually they do when they are in a space which only otakus are! Of course, when otakus go to karaoke, they would sing a lot of anime songs as they like. They are even familiar with some karaoke equipments such as UGA, Joysound, or DAM since some of them show anime movies for each song. My favorite is DAM.
How you enjoy karaoke is up to you. Actually I love it. No matter what, I go to karaoke at least twice a month. Otherwise, I would be insane. Also, there is a funny word to introduce, that is ヒトカラ[hitokara]. This is an abbreviation of 一人でカラオケ[hitori de karaoke] which means to go to karaoke by oneself. Sounds lonely? No no no, actually there are a lot of people who enjoy ヒトカラ. As I have said, karaoke is so cheap here that you can kill time so easily. Also, you can practice singing, and try out some new songs you are learning. Now that you are alone in the booth, no one cares if you make a mistake. You can shout as you like. I am such an otaku that I have to care about songs I choose depending upon who I go with. I can’t sing any anime songs in front of non-otaku people, right? So in order to clear my frustration, I do hitokara and keep singing songs from otome games.
When I went to karaoke with some other bloggers from Singapore, I was so surprised because they naturally sang some J-POP songs without English captions. I guess they must have listened to it so many times.
If you plan to come to Japan, why don’t you try karaoke? Have fun!
