confessions of a karaokeholic

"Man, I haven't been to karaoke for ages!"

Thinking this to myself as I sit at my desk, daydreaming, I was really feeling the urge to do karaoke. I never really went to karaoke back home in Australia, and wouldn't be caught dead singing on front of a group of people back home, especially ones that I didn't know. I never really hated singing at school, but I was too nervous to sing in front of other people I would just mouth the words or sing under my breath when we had to sing the school songs. For me, it's kinda like talking to other people when you're in a public bathroom. When other people try to strike up conversations in the bathroom, no matter how friendly they're trying to be, I can't help but answer in short, curt responses. I just feel it's inherently wrong and something no one in their right mind should do.

Karaoke has kinda changed all that now I guess (the singing in public thing, not the bathroom conversation thing. Still working on that). Turns out is a good skill to have, especially when you find yourself doing English songs with your classes and singing The Beetle's "Hello Goodbye" about 15 times a week.

I don't know what makes singing songs with your friends so fun though. I guess as the only pastime possible in a city that doesn't house any clubs or fancy bars, I now just associate going out and having a good time with friends with singing songs stuck in my head in a dimly lit room. So has it really been that long since I've gone out with friends and then, If I'm feeling so melodically frustrated that I'm dying to get my kumbayayas out? I glance at my calendar and backtrack to work out the last time I went.

Three weeks. Less than a month since my last visit and I'm this desperate to go to karaoke. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm totally screwed when I go back home.

j-bands & karaoke

It's hard trying to stay motivated about learning a language I hear everyday, and where the fear of needing to make the most of your time in a country while you can dissipates after realising you've been in the country for almost two years, and will be staying for another year.  Moreso when you find out your employer doesn't have the money to let you do the interpreting/translating course you really wanted to do in your third year.

But one thing that I've tried to do at least is learn a couple of Japanese songs for the inevitable times I go to karaoke with a Japanese person. Which actually turns out to be ridiculously hard. It essentially involves learning lyrics that you don't actually completely understand and sound like complete gibberish, which makes it hard to remember. On top of that, when those songs are performed at karaoke, the lyrics may be written in kanji, or non-phonetic Chinese characters, meaning that even if you do recognise a character like 歌, you might not know if it's supposed to be said as "uta" or "ka" if you don't know the whole word. Because of that, I'm usually sticking to really simple, slowish songs. I did try once to tackle Japanese rap, but I like to pretend that never really happened.

I'm also becoming quite aware that the natural consequence of being surrounded by a culture with a second language is not having much, if any, awareness of the pop-culture, and what's cool and what's not. It's kinda like how we might know differences in nuance between words like icky and disgusting, but for anyone who's learning English, might not get the difference. It feels like it's the same with me and Japanese music. I can hear the melodies and tunes to songs, but I can't quite tell what music is cool and my-age-appropriate or not. I now have a much better understanding of my angsty, ragey boys at school who feel that Avril Lavigne is the epitome of hardcore rock.

So that's why I'm conflicted about whether I should be learning songs by this Japanese band called EXILE (that's right, it's spelt in all capitals, so I think it's normally shouted in Japanese in the middle of a regular sentence).  Think Backstreet Boys, if this was the 90's and they didn't try to do a failed reunion thing. They are a boy band, so as you can imagine, are emblazoned on pencil cases and lots of teenager paraphernalia, but unlike boy bands back home, are actually liked by guys here too.

One thing I do appreciate about them is that they make no pretenses about the fact that not all of them can sing. Out of the 7-group "band", only two are singers, while the others are "performers", meaning they do ridiculous boy band dances for all their ballady songs and don't even hold mikes and pretend to sing, or even try to hide the fact that they're not a real band. I kinda like them even more now actually, since they amalgamated with this other boyband and there are now 14 members. Still, with only the two of them that actually sing. It makes watching their music videos on youtube much more exciting.



I don't quite see it, but some students were trying to tell me that I looked like one of the singers in the group. Not completely buying it, but I like the idea that I look like someone just so I have a potential idea for a halloween costume. Maybe I should give up my dream of having my own Japanese posse and just start wearing all white and get 12 other guys to follow me around and do well-practiced dances around me instead.