My One Man Show

I think I found my geeky passion. Today I tried karaoke for the first time (in a real karaoke place). I had spent the afternoon on a bike ride to the neighboring city to check out the sights and enjoy the break in hot weather. After I had done a bit of (impulse) shopping I decided to head home. It was nearing dusk, which happens here around five-thirty, when I thought I’d stop by this place just to see what they offer. It is a pretty nice joint, looks fairly new and offers bowling, batting cages, internet, billiards and comic books all in addition to karaoke. Reading comics is huge over here. If you’re interested in anything… seriously anything, there is probably a comic book series that suits that interest. Well, maybe not everything but, they write comics about anything from romance, school, fantasy, sci-fi to tennis. Anyways, you pay 450 yen an hour, about $4.00 to sit and sing, read comic books and drink all the soda you want. I called Ayumi and informed her that I would be coming home a little late…

So to sing at this place, I needed to become a member so after filling out a form I was given a white basket containing my membership card, a microphone and a remote control that looked like it had been removed from the bridge of the U.S.S Enterprise. Being a karaoke virgin, I didn’t know how to do any of this so, after the employee lady escorted me to my room (and showed me where to get my free drinks and soft serve ice-cream) I had to beg her to show me how to run the console.

In this room, laying on the coffee table lay four large books, each about the size of a yellow-pages book filled with rows and rows of songs. She showed me the English section and there were probably (guessing) 10,000 songs. I was a little timid at first and thought I’d break in these vocals with a little Queen (what else?) “Don’t Stop me Now”. The song finished and I thought to myself why stop now so I kept singing Queen. This book had about 100 different songs all by Queen. Some so songs obscure they’d never left my lips outside of the shower but, I’ll be honest in saying that I was tickled to see them in there. After a few songs I realized I was really getting into it, flailing my arms in the air, playing the air guitar, beating the drums with my mike… all which I would have hesitated to do had someone else been in the room, or the lights being on.

After a few songs, I thought I needed to give my falsetto a rest and put in a little Sinatra and then got really bold and tried a song in Japanese. I didn’t have a good impression about my Japanese singing. The fact that someone peeked into my room just after I hit an exceptionally ugly (Japanese) note helped me to realize this; probably to see who was strangling the cat. It was time for a refill of my drink and then back to Queen. I must say I was a little sad to leave after my one hour was up but, looking forward to the $10.00 three hour package they have going. The good news, this place is open 24 hours. The bad news, I unfortunately have somewhat of a life and don’t think I’ll ever get to utilize an early morning sing-a-thon… especially being that this place is in another town accessible only by bike, train or car for those lucky ones. Can you imagine seeing a bloodshot, white kid on a bike in Japan riding up hill at two in the morning? Yea, neither can I.