| |
Living in Japan was a fantastic experience, and looking back it surprises me that thinking about singing karaoke with Dave and Carl makes me feel ‘natsukashi’. Natsukashi is one of those Japanese words that cannot be translated into English, but the thrust of it is a warm feeling of nostalgia.
Three grown men getting shitfaced drunk is to be expected. Those three men then going to a karaoke box and singing their lungs out seems a little suspect, so let me explain.
The journey from the mindset that ‘karaoke is shit’ to having to have the microphone prised from your hands is a typical rite of passage for the Westerner in Japan. I resisted for at least a year, and then, under duress from some Japanese friends, I relented and ‘sang’ West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys – a song I talked instead of singing. The Japanese people in the bar, ever polite, clapped at the end of my effort, so I thought I’d treat them to another… And before you know it you find yourself suggesting karaoke once the bar no longer holds promise.
The three of us were famous friends. We even had a signature characteristic: I was arrogance, for the simple reason that I am an arrogant prick; Carl, being one of the most conceited people I’ve ever met, happily took on the mantle of conceit; and Dave, being one of the most awesomely gregarious people you’re ever likely to meet, happily snapped up confidence. So, conceit, arrogance and confidence we were, and off to karaoke we went, drunk as monkeys and ready to sing our signature tunes. You have not lived without hearing Dave’s Copacabana; my London Calling was quite shouty but I thought it awesome; and Carl’s You Get What You Give by the New Radicals was splendid. And let’s not forget the group songs: Dave and I doing Wonderwall brought many a tear to the eye, and the three of us singing Beautiful Day by U2 with obligatory leaping all over the couches was a real crowd pleaser.
Well, when I say crowd, there was no crowd. We invariably went to a karaoke box which means you rent a room resplendent with kitsch coloured sofas, a TV, large books of songs to choose from, tambourines to bang on, a whole host of microphones, and most importantly of all – a telephone. It was the telephone that was used to summon copious quantities of alcohol brought by smiling servers. Sometimes there was even an all-you-can-drink deal which could not have been cost-effective for the house on the nights we were in.
One time I went to karaoke with a group of English teachers I’d just met – without Dave and Carl – and I had a terrible time. These people had been to karaoke together before, and their style lacked everything I loved about karaoke. There was no arguing, no microphone hogging, no jumping on the sofa, no wildly ordering tons of food and more drinks – basically, karaoke without the fun. These guys had an order to things, comments were even passed on each performance, songs were restarted because someone messed up, the mood felt competitive and, in my opinion, the whole thing was just plain wrong. I told Dave and Carl about this and they couldn’t believe it. Our karaoke was where you let yourself go, and where the only judgements were on how funny it was or on how drunk we got.
Those many times we found ourselves in karaoke boxes were hysterical – without exception. Sometimes there was a large crowd of us, sometimes a friend from home was visiting and had to be initiated, but the best times was when it was just the three of us.
I know those days will never come back – the three of us have taken our individual traits and secured a continent each to live on. And even if we did all get together somewhere where we could get a karaoke box, it wouldn’t be the same. Those days are done, dusted, and chalked up to memory. So, I’m writing about it now because I really don’t want to forget those many drunken nights we shared in karaoke boxes; one of us singing his lungs out, one of us jumping up and down - tambourine in hand, and one of us either plugging in the next song or desperately trying to shout a drinks order into the phone in bad Japanese.
Happy days.
| |
