There is one main advantage to turning 20 years old.  You can drink legally.  That is, if you happen to be in Japan.

When this happens to you or someone you know, the first thing you should do is gather a group of people and head to the nearest karaoke place to drink and sing and enjoy all sorts of hilarity.

I just so happened to be in Japan during my friend’s 20th birthday (Lauren is her name).

So, ten of us from the dorm assembled and began to make a trip to the nearest karaoke place to celebrate this event.  (There’s a million karaoke places in Japan, so one close by wasn’t too hard to find).  Luckily, two people in the group (Alicia and Chris) spoke Japanese pretty well and were able to make lots of gestures and point to pictures on the menu to get us a room and order some drinks.  The linguists of the group deciphered that it was about 375 yen per hour (almost $4).  Not bad.  There was a special for 3,000 yen (a little over $30) for all you can drink and singing for 2 hours per person, but everyone decided against it ’cause it seemed like too much yen for too little time.  5 minutes of a combination of Japanese, English, and hand signals and we were set up for some karaoke.

And the merriment began.  Almost.

Surprisingly, the room was large enough to fit all of us comfortably, but the temperature was that of a sauna (Apparently that’s an extra feature of the karaoke room).  So, while one person fiddled with the temperature controls on the wall to try to make the room less like the subtropics, the rest of us were thumbing through the phone book sized songbooks to find the 10 pages of English songs and trying to decipher how and to what extent the various remote looking things worked.

No English buttons here.

My self appointed task was to figure out how work the remote.  Common sense would guess you used it to choose the songs you wanted to perform, but how if you can’t read the buttons?

Trial and Error.

I could try to explain what happened when I pushed what seemed like every combination of buttons, but I’m not sure what, if anything, happened when I did.  In the end, though, only one combination mattered.  The one you did to choose the song you wanted to sing.

And then I figured it out.

All I had to do was enter the number of the song and press the green button.  Simple.

I guess being in a country where you are suddenly illiterate cuts down your common sense meter when it comes to figuring out to work the karaoke remote.

The merriment began at last.

The cool thing about karaoke rooms is that they have a phone that goes directly to the front desk so you can order drinks or food or tell them you want more time to sing.  (If you’re really good you don’t even have to interrupt your song).  Lucky for us, when the guy brought us the first round of drinks he also successfully adjusted the temperature to a more normal level.  Problem solved.

The combination of sitting in a dark room with friends just drinking, learning to ignore the depressing Japanese videos that had nothing to do with the songs, singing as loud as you can, playing with the tambourines, and turning the volume all they way up (while others outside were thankful for the invention of the soundproof room) was a great way to loosen up and enjoy the moment.   Really.

Not one of us didn’t have an awesome time.

When the front desk called our room to tell us our time was up almost no one wanted to leave.  But alas.  Limited yen and school the next morning brought us to the front desk to pay up and conclude the wonderful evening.

The bill.

Almost 30,000 yen (about $300) was the total for ten people and two hours of Karaoke.

Naturally, everyone was surprised at the amount.  Since it was all one big bill we each chipped in for the amount we thought we owed; the 375 yen per hour, roughly 600 yen per drink etc.

Short by half.

After further confusion and bewilderment the linguists discovered that they actually misread the rate for the room.  It was actually 375 yen per half hour not per hour.  So, everyone put in accordingly.

Closer this time.

I put in my two 1,000 yen bills (about $20 total) to cover my one drink and the two hours of singing.  Once everyone figured out how many drinks they had, how much they put in previously, and all that mess associated with paying one big bill, the pile of money was ready for one last count.

We hoped it was enough this time.

The linguist turned banker (Chris) thankfully discovered a 10,000 yen bill (about $100) in the pile.  Someone accidentally put in a 10,000 yen bill in instead of a 1,000 yen bill.

Guess who? Me.

Yes.  Thinking my 1,000 bills were folded together I saw the first few digits of the bills and instinctively thought they were the same without counting the zeros.  10,000 and 1,000 are only one zero apart, you know.

Whew, crisis averted.

Although the cashier would’ve seen the error, it saved us (me) further embarrassment and allowed us to at least do one thing correctly on our awesome karaoke adventure.

Karaoke is a fabulous time I look forward to doing many times this summer.

Things to remember for next time.

1. While it’s extremely handy to travel with people that know the local language, it helps if they are really good at correctly deciphering Japanese, or aren’t completely new to the karaoke scene in Japan.
2. Check your money when you are paying and save yourself the embarrassment of of accidentally putting in a very large bill, giving the unintended notion that you are picking up everyone’s tab.   Count. the. Zeros.
3. Bring your own booze.  The 3,000 yen might be a deal if you drink a lot, but either way it’s much easier (and depending on how much you drink much cheaper) to just buy it yourself and bring it with you.

Karaoke take two should be smooth(er) sailing.