Written By: Hilary Hughes I knew we were in trouble when I saw a waist-high rack of ketchup-and-mustard hued tambourines just beyond the bar. After a Sunday of shopping and people watching in Harajuku, the neighborhood made famous by ska-girl-gone-fashionista, Gwen Stefani, my friends and I had opted to partake in one of the most cherished of Japanese pastimes. I wanted to do something that Japanese kids of my age were doing without hesitation whenever they had an extra 1000yen (approx. $10) in their pockets. I wanted to scream, dance, twist, shout and serenade the world with a hi-fi backing track behind me. I wanted karaoke!
I had come to Tokyo to visit a good friend of mine who’s currently performing at Tokyo Disney in a jazz/swing revue for the theme park, and a Japanese friend of his, Masa, had insisted that he take us around for the day. After dropping more cash than I’d care to admit on a vivid tangerine/cerulean pair of New Balance special issue sneakers, we moseyed over to Shibuya, where Masa promised us a musical experience that we would never forget. My friend, Darius, had been living in Tokyo for a little over six months at this point and was well-versed in all things karaoke, and as Masa giggled with glee and whipped out his cell to text the masses, Dar grabbed my hand as we skipped towards the elevator that would take us up to the bar.
The doors opened on the fifth floor of the unassuming building, and we stepped into a front foyer that was very well-lit and, surprisingly, quiet. I had assumed that a karaoke joint would be noisy and bustling and that you’d be able to hear tone-deaf interpretations of Cyndi Lauper and Bon Jovi busting through the doorways of the private karaoke rooms; when the soft voice of a sheepish looking girl at the front desk was the only audible noise to be heard, I have to admit, my first impression of
In brilliant hues of red, yellow, and blue and visibly well-worn, the rack of tambourines was pushed up next to a bin of maracas and a couple of bongos. Additional accompaniment, should singing along with a show-stopping Grease megamix move you, was available for the karaoke singers. My only experience with karaoke up to this point involved a two-pint minimum and a bunch of rowdy frat boys abroad shouting along to “Livin’ on a Prayer”; those bros that night at the dive bar were into their karaoke, but musical instruments?! Definitely absent. The Japanese were hardcore. I found the Japanese to be even more hardcore when I was told that along with our 1000Y cover charge we were supplied with unlimited booze for the hour we had rented out the karaoke cubicle.
As can be expected when you give a writer, a Disney-backed jazz singer, and a reeeeally enthusiastic Japanese twenty-something who has a penchant for eighties pop a closet-sized space with a microphone and bottomless pitchers of beer, beautiful chaos erupted in a matter of minutes. We sang “Rehab”! We sang “Uptown Girl”! We sang anything we recognized in the phone book-sized song list, and our selections ran the gamut from Hanson to the Holy Grail of karaoke standards, “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
By the time we left (two and a half hours later), the streets of Tokyo were teeming with life and the last trains leaving Shibuya were packed. Most of the people on my train home were falling asleep standing, having just gotten out of work; some were teenagers, sharing an iPod and splitting a pair of headphones between them; and maybe, just like me, some of them were pleasantly tipsy on Top 40 favorites played over shoddy speakers in a karaoke bar somewhere lost in the neon lights of Shibuya. Sure, the beer could’ve been responsible for my late night euphoria, but I’m pretty sure that my first dabbling in karaoke the way it should be done had something to do with it.
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