Guest Blog: Karaoke

The Japanese invented karaoke some 20-odd years ago. In the years since, it has grown into the default form of entertainment for people of any age throughout most of Asia. Tonight, I had my first experience with this distinctly Asian phenomenon.

Of course, karaoke exists in the US - it even made a pretty great movie a while back. But it is nothing like karaoke in Asia.

First, the venue is not a bar, bowling alley, or other general entertainment area. Rather, huge buildings house room after room which can be reserved for a private group of friends to perform in. To give some picture of the scale and popularity: our room number was 392 tonight, and it was a struggle to get a room on a Wednesday night – we had no chance for a Friday night with only one week’s notice.

The room has a couch and low tables, and, depending on the size, maybe some stools and high tables. The central feature is a “performance seat” which we hardly ever used. There is a small screen in front of the performance seat, but there are two larger screens on each side of it facing the “audience”, and these screens run lyrics. In our crowd, the performer were generally just part of the audience.

In fact, the word “audience” is somewhat interesting, because most of the time the group is just hanging out and chatting, and not paying much attention to the singer holding the microphone. Of course, when the laowei (foreigner) performs, everyone pays attention.

For those who have had the misfortune of hearing me sing, you know it is not a pretty sound. But this crowd didn’t care – despite the fact that nearly all sounded quite good on most of their selections, the quality was not the point. It was just about having fun. So I butchered a few songs from the list of Western songs (the Beatles, Nirvana, and the Eagles). My coworkers sang mostly Chinese pop songs. All in all, it was a surprisingly fun way to hang out with a group of friends and let my guard down. I highly recommend the experience to anyone, even if I don’t plan to make it a regular feature on my own social calendar.