Yesterday I went out with some friends. There were four mothers and five kids. The original plan was to picnic at a large park in the area, but the rain put a dampener on things. So we went to a Hawaiian restaurant for lunch instead, followed up by a bit of karaoke.
The funniest incident for the whole day was that in the 20 minutes between leaving the restaurant and arriving at the karaoke, all four of our toddlers fell asleep in the car. So we walked into the building each carrying a dead-to-the-world child on our shoulders (the fifth child is four years old and outgrew daytime naps a while ago). I wonder what that looked like to the karaoke staff.
Anyway, we had lots of fun. I had never actually done karaoke before in that setting. We got our own little room with a TV in the corner so it was all very private. I was interested, however, to still observe the cultural difference between Australia and Japan with this one. In Australia, you just don't really sing in front of your friends, unless perhaps you're a bona fide singer anyway. And if you decide to do something a little bit mad like karaoke, you giggle self-consciously and apologise for your really terrible voice and just generally feel shy. You might warm up after a while, but it's not like you can just launch into it.
Not so in Japan. Karaoke isn't about how well you can sing, it's just about something friends do together as a fun way to pass the time. Of my three companions, one could sing reasonably well, one was ordinary and the third was pretty bad. But she wasn't in the slightest bit embarrassed about it!
And now I can tick off another "quintessentially Japanese experience" on my imaginary to-do list (you know, the one I have to tell everyone about next time we go back to Australia and they ask how Japan is). Perhaps I should consider climbing Mount Fuji with Craig in a few weeks' time after all...
