カラオケ karaoke

My first time doing karaoke in Japan! Didn't really know what to expect, but it was great. We had reversed a booth from 10pm until 5am. As daunting as that seems the time really flew by. Most of us stuck it out the entire time, a few left before the trains stopped running (close to midnight). We had about 15 people in our booth, and you get unlimited drinks (coffee, soda, water, etc). They even provide instruments (tambourines and maracas!). You can pick and choose different songs, English and Japanese. We sang both. Well, for the Japanese songs we mostly just sang the English bits (they kind of just throw in random English words all the time.. baby, love, heart, etc). They play a music video to go with the song and the lyrics flash across the page. Since the don't own the rights to the actual music videos it's just their interpretation. For example, we sang Sweet Home Alabama and the background video was showing those double-decker buses driving around England..


I'm not sure how they get the English song lyrics because some of the lyrics were a little bit different than what we knew them to be. The song Africa by Toto, the lyrics were something like 'As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like an empress in sad Kenya'. Just a little off from the actual lyrics (as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti)

Here is one of the many random Japanese songs we sang!


And yet again another walk of shame. Nightlife in Tokyo is almost too extreme for me. Either you go out early in the evening and make it home before 11pm or you go out around 10pm and come back at 6am. There's not really an in between option. (Taxi's are the priciest at night)