Japan Is Doomed

What do three young, hip and crazy cats with time to kill do in Tokyo? They go to Karaoke! Last weekend Matt, Lynsey (who came to see Feeder with us, remember?). It’s actually our third or fourth time doing Karaoke but I thought I’d write about it anyway.

Karaoke is not what everyone thinks it is. It’s not a load of drunken businessmen disgracing themselves to Bohemian Rhapsody. Karaoke in Japan is a very serious, multi billion dollar industry and, just like everything else in this country, it’s organized meticulously. You go in and you book your time in slots - down to the nearest minute. If you want to sing for 59 minutes, you’ll get 59 minutes. (Although if you run over by a few minutes to finish a song the staff will let you because in Japan you do not interrupt someone’s song if you do a thousand curses will descend upon you.)

To order a song you pick up the hand held infra-red controller and find the song by searching it’s onboard library. The library is updated in real time from the control deck downstairs, so if a new song is added you can select it immidiatly. The song itself will then appear in the queue of tracks, and when it’s your turn the words pop up in front of some random stock footage video. The videos that play behind the words are hilareous, and their plots include;

• Japanese man falls in love with Japanese girl, has fight with jeleous boyfriend of said girl, then sings a song for no apparent reason.
• Rain falls over Tokyo. People dance for no apparent reason.
• Girls wearing next to nothing dance for no apparent reason.
• Flowers sway in the wind. People eat rice then dance for no apparent reason.

It’s a real challenge to keep a straight face when two fully grown men are pelvic thrusting in a shopping mall on widescreen TV.

It’s hard to imagine how big these Karaoke places are, but as a rough guide I’d say you could fit around 7 people in each room, and there can be up to 700 rooms in one Karaoke establishment, and after 5pm weekdays and all weekend these will fill up entirely. Karaoke has become totally essential to the Japanese as an icebreaker and really is ingraned into society. I asked my students if they like Karaoke and it’s like asking Madonna if she likes making poor career choices. I guarantee you, if you ever come to Japan, the Japanese will ask you if you like Karaoke. If your answer is yes, they’ll laugh and take you to Karaoke. If your answer is no, they’ll take you anyway.

Whoops! I forgot!

I want to show the video of a song Lynsey sang at Karaoke once. It’s by a Japanese woman from Okinawa. Thanks to Youtube ect. Enjoy! The video is available here. It’s by Rima Natsukawa and it’s called Nada Sousou. Everyone in Japan knows it - it was huge a few years ago.