So, as some of you know, I’m the vice-president for the Japanese club at my school.  A couple of weeks ago, a group of us decided to go to a karaoke bar as a club activity.  It was my first experience doing karaoke, so I thought I’d do a quick write-up, so if you (by chance) happen to be considering going to a karaoke bar, you’ll know what to do…maybe.

First of all, “karaoke bar” is a bit of a misnomer since the place we went to doesn’t serve alcohol.  That didn’t matter to us, since most of us can’t/won’t drink anyway.  We booked a large room Japanese room in advance.  (They have different rooms in a variety of languages like English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Portuguese.)

We all managed to make it to the karaoke "bar" in one piece, although a few of our members wound up being a little late because of work.  The place looked a little scary from the outside, but it was nice (and more importantly, clean) on the inside.  However, it was very, very hot.  I don’t know if they didn’t have an air conditioner or weren’t running it, but it was boiling in there, which meant that we were sweating like crazy for the entire evening.  The employee (who was bilingual) led us to our room…where we discovered that they’d given us an English room instead.  We’re still not exactly sure why there was the mix-up (since we are the Japanese club and asked for a Japanese room), but we think that it might have something to do with the fact that our club president does not have a Japanese name.  (He’s actually Chinese…but then why did they give us an English room?  Japanese + Chinese = English????)  We were trying to explain to the guy that he’d given us the wrong room, but he didn't understand until someone got the bright idea of explaining to him in Japanese.  Of course, then he understood perfectly.  (I guess it is a little weird to have a roomful of every-nationality-except-Japanese people telling you that they want to sing in Japanese….)

After another long wait while he installed/fixed the Japanese machine, we were finally ready to get started.  The employee guy asked us if we wanted the disco ball plugged in and we said yes.  BIG MISTAKE.  The disco ball was more like a multi-colored light ball which was determined to give several people epileptic seizures.  What’s more, the only way to unplug it was to climb on top of a rickety table…which is what I wound up doing halfway through the night.  (Sometimes it’s nice to be small…)

Anyway, a few people started entering songs into the machine while the rest of us flipped through the song catalogues.  I had come prepared, since I knew a dozen or more Japanese songs very well.  Unfortunately, the catalogues were five or more years old.  D:  Since the majority of the club joined because they are (a otaku or (b otaku who got turned onto Japanese because they are otaku, we didn’t know a lot of the older songs.  In fact, they only had a few songs that I had heard before, and I didn’t most of them very well.  I wound up teaming up with our courageous club president (who, I should point out, can speak decent Japanese but can’t read it) and singing “Loop & Loop” by Asian Kung Fu Generation.  If you don’t know the song, it’s here.  After about two lines, we realized that (a I couldn’t read the words fast enough and (b he didn’t know the song well enough.  So, basically, we sang the last line of the chorus…and mumbled through the rest of it.  =_=  Not my proudest moment.  So, kids, what have we learned from this?  Don’t expect that you can read mountains of kanji with furigana flying at you at high speed.

The good news, for those of us who were reading-challenged, was that the Japanese section also came with some English songs…but they English lyrics with katakana over them.  XD  It was kind of funny trying to sing along with the katakana lyrics…  Plus, the people who had made the karaoke videos either had a very strange sense of humor or went out and filmed very bizarre things…  For example, one video which kept popping up was of an old West-style town…complete with a train.  It became a running joke over the evening; we’d stop singing in the middle of the song and go, “AUGH, THE TRAIN!  THE TRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!”  Then there was another video which looked like someone had been wandering around San Francisco with a video camera…

Anyway, I finally wound up working up the courage to sing in Japanese again, and sang 「千の風」(“A Thousand Winds”).  If you don’t know it, you can find it here. Fortunately, the lyrics went by slowly enough for me to sing it…which made me happy.  ^_^

Then someone (we're not sure who, but we have a pretty good guess) picked “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto.”  If, by some miracle, you have managed to escape this song, you can suffer along with everyone else by clicking here.  Now, imagine a room full of hyperactive Japanese club people singing that…and dancing...and making corny jokes at random lines...  Well, you get the idea.

All in all, it was fun, if slightly hot and disheartening at points.  Would I recommend it? Sure.  But don’t expect them to have any of the songs you know…  =_=  And it's more amusing with friends who can mumble along with you.  :3