Karaoke!

Today is Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday in Japan, and I have the day off from work. In fact, I don't have to go to work until Thursday, because it's the beginning of Silver Week, and tomorrow and Wednesday are national holidays too. So how did I celebrate this extended vacation?

Karaoke.

There are no karaoke places in my town, but it's only a few stops by train and 220 yen to get to a nice sized city with plenty of them. I went with two other Americans, and we paid for two hours, so I got plenty of chances to sing. This may or may not be a good thing.

I'd only ever done karaoke once in Tokyo, so I was afraid a small little place like this wouldn't have a lot of American songs to choose from. I was wrong. They had a ton of American songs, including a lot of really recent hits. All the more for me to butcher...

Songs Kristen sung well:
Taylor Swift--You Belong With Me
P!nk--Rock Star

Songs Kristen failed at:
Kelly Clarkson--Breakaway
Within Temptation--Angels
Anything sung by Amy Lee

I only sung one song in Japanese, which was by Utada Hikaru, and I actually...didn't do too bad at it. Sometimes I couldn't read the hiragana fast enough to keep up with the tune, but I survived.

Despite my less-than-stellar performances (or perhaps because of it?), I had a lot of fun. I think karaoke is going to become my activity of choice for going out. Maybe by the end of my year here I'll actually become good at it.

Stranger things have happened.