My first time karaoke!
My first time karaoke in Japan - an unforgettable evening with my language school group! From the shy start with ‘99 balloons’ to the exuberant singing along and drinking soju: a must-do experience in Japan. 5 out of 5 stars!
Vincent
2/14/20254 min read


My first time karaoke!
I went to karaoke for the first time last night and it was an amazing experience that you absolutely have to try. 5 out of 5 stars!
The start
We went as a whole group from the school as there was a bank holiday on Tuesday, so there was compensation in lieu of lessons. We met relatively early and then went straight to a room that had been reserved for us.
The room was long, colourful and full of seats. We booked two rooms in total to accommodate all the people from the school who were there. But before we started, most of us, including me, quickly went to a mini supermarket to buy drinks and snacks. You are allowed to bring these with you.


And then it all started. At first I was still quite shy, as my singing doesn't convince everyone, to put it nicely, but I was quickly handed the microphone and so, after some frantic searching around, I ended up singing ‘99 Luftballons’ by Nena. And that was the end of most of the tension. I also drank my first can of beer relatively quickly and the whole situation relaxed in my head! We had several microphones so that nobody ever had to sing alone if they didn't want to, even if some people didn't dare or simply weren't interested.
The song selection
It's important to mention that on the I-Pad, where you added the songs to the queue, you mainly found Japanese songs. Of course there were also international songs, even a separate section, but it was more difficult to find songs that you really knew or wanted to sing, and often there were only old versions of the songs. So the only German song I found was the hit by Nena and otherwise I tried other songs like those by Michael Jackson. But I also found newer songs and the evening ended with slow, wistful songs like ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay and ‘All I want’ by Kodaline. Both songs that I quickly put in the queue before the evening was over at 10pm and the machine switched off.
The evening itself
We started at 6pm and actually sang for 4 hours straight, and our voices were all at the end. After a certain time, or you could say after the second beer, I got a bit more daring and gave it my all on one of my favourite songs ‘Take me Home’ by Aurora. My classmates couldn't stop laughing, which I didn't realise during the song, but when I saw the videos that were sent to me afterwards, I understood. It's funny, my voice sounded much better when I was singing...
We all had a lot of fun, but at the end of the day it was a weeknight, so as noted above, we had to leave at 10pm. Nevertheless, we had a good drink and I also tried soju for the first time, which is very popular in Japan. It's actually a spirit from Korea with rice as the main ingredient, but it's also popular in Japan. It has an approximate alcohol content of 20% and is often sold with fruit flavours. I then went to the Kombini and bought three small snacks, which I devoured at home before falling into bed. Very important: you don't eat or drink on the street in Japan, it's considered rude, even in the evening. Accordingly, getting up this morning was a bit bumpy and only the fact that I live 5 minutes away from the language school saved my punctuality. If it had been a normal day, I would have been one of the last to arrive one minute before the start of lessons, but the evening must have been good for the others too. So I was the second one in the classroom at 08:59 in the morning, which made me grin inside. When I saw the tired faces of the others as they apologised to the teacher when they came in, my grin grew even bigger.




Conclusion
All in all, I really enjoyed the evening, unfortunately I can't tell you about the price yet as we were given the room, and by the way, each of us was given free soft drinks and free soft ice cream from the machine. We had a good time, especially with the ice cream, where you could generously add your own chocolate sauce, raspberry sauce and matcha sauce. It was a really successful evening and I look forward to repeating it in the future, because even normally shy people were able to shed their shame and just sing. It was very private, we laughed a lot and of course sang a lot too! 5 out of 5 stars!
There was no blog article yesterday because of the early karaoke, but the day before yesterday I had a great sense of achievement and an amazing encounter with a cat. In case you missed it, you can read about it here: A day of efficiency, surprises and freedom.