A Night in Odori- Karaoke Adventure Fantastic Supreme

The large TV screen displayed the lyrics in english and katakana along with nonesense videos that were almost always completely inapropriate for the song at hand. For example "live and let die" featured the nonstop- thirll ride that is rding on a san-francisco style street trolly.
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...Well, maybe not, but Karaoke in Sapporo was not only very different from the expierience in the states, but was substantially more fun.

The occasion was John Harvey's 22nd birthday- and while Harvey was really neither here nor there on the matter of growing a year older, he and the rest of the crew were quite exited to expierience the Japanese brand of Karaoke.

Well, maybe not.

To start, because space is at a premium, the Karaoke bar was above a pachinko parlor which is essentially 10 stories of steel covered in lights and filled with machines designed to take your money in a dignified and refreshingly addictivly fashion.

Joo rocking out to a Korean song I could not hope to understand.
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Upon entering the karaoke "bar" you are escorted down a darkened hallway to one of many glass doors; behind each was a private room. Each room had a large TV (which blared commercials non-stop whenever a song was not playing) and three large speakers all situated in front of a large c-shaped booth. Two wireless microphones were available to sing on of the hundreds of songs availible in japanese, english, korean or chinese- karaoke favorites such as "Bohemian Rhapsody) to more obscure songs such as "independence day" by elliott smith and "save the population" by the red hot chili peppers.

Harvey and I singing Karaoke- singing to midi versions of american songs is one of things that gets more humiliating every time (still fun however).
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With just the six of us in one room, the karaoke expierience was slightly less humiliating then your typical karaoke fiasco. On top of it all, everthing was electronic so queing up songs and order food was simple and convienent - that is of course, if you can read japanese. Fortunantly, Grace's host sister spoke a great deal of english and was kind enough to escort us through odori,susukino and everywhere in between.

The night ended with an amazing ride on a gigantic ferris wheel that was perched atop a seven or eight floor building; the ride (although six dollars) offered a breathtaking view of odori and neighboring susukino.

The five BCA kids- Harvey in the center is now 22.
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All in all, for a tuesday night I can say it was a pretty great time- 3 hours, two bowls of curry rice and 26 dollars later I had some good pictures, good times, and the unpleasant burden of a lifetime of shameful memories resulting from my own "broken symphony".

J De Mara

ps: I apologize in advance for the por wuality of the pictures- the karaoke room was a bit dim leaving it the pictures a little fuzzy with out the flash and shadowy with it.