It occurred to me after my last post that I had plenty of pictures piled up from that most Japanese of late-night activities: karaoke! The picture above is a group of Ozzies singing "Land Down Under," on what I think was IHOUSE's first big night out at karaoke.
This is American Jen and Australian Robin, both of whom have returned home. In Japan, karaoke establishments (karaoke stores?) contain small rooms with seats around the the walls, and, usually, a stage to sing on. There are two microphones, a monitor facing the singers, and a monitor facing the "audience."
This is the interior of a karaoke place we went to once. It looks impressive, but the rooms were pretty small, and we decided it wasn't worth the cost and long walk to go there. Mainly we've frequented a more local place, which is smaller but has decent rooms.

This is French-Canadian Alex and Mae at the "fancy" karaoke place. The number of people we have varies quite a bit. There have been times when we've taken over three of the rooms at the small local place, but sometimes we only take enough to fill a single room (between eight and twelve people). We're lucky to have found places with a nice variety of English songs, although now and then someone is confident enough to try a Japanese song (with varying degrees of success). I can't think of much else to say about karaoke, so I'll move on to pictures that probably don't mean much to those non-IHOUSE residents, but I'll explain anyway.

This is British Dave (a karaoke super-star) and Australian Cass, at Cass's going-away karaoke night. She was the last of the going-away batch to leave us, in early February.

These are some of the men of IHOUSE, getting super-emotional on Hanson's "Mmm Bop." This was only slightly less painful than their rendition of Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River."

A vocal-chord straining performance of Scissor Sister's "Take Your Mama." The later in the night it gets, the more absurd / difficult / ridiculous the song choices become.

Australian Sarven and British Dave get emo on what is very likely a slightly-whiney rock song. But they do it with style!

This is an older picture of American Marcus, who can sing anything you throw at him!


And rounding out the karaoke post (although I regret that I haven't taken my camera every time to get pictures of everyone), is a group head-bang photo.
Eventually there will come a post with a little more substance, probably next time about Airsoft.

posted by No_Fluff_Reviewer @ 10:16 PM