This Here's a Tale for All the Fellas

Posted by Guest Blogger - Kiki

11 October 2010

Greetings from Tokyo! I am having a great time – loving every minute with the girls. But this entry is not about them, it’s about my night out in Tokyo. So to combat jet lag, my sister decided the best thing for me to do was to go out on Friday night. Sounded like a plan to me, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? Graciously her co-workers took us to dinner and then for some entertainment. And by entertainment, yes I mean karaoke; after all, we are in Japan.

After meeting at the train station, we headed to the restaurant. It was a Korean BBQ place. Although they had an English menu, thank goodness for Jess’s co-workers, they did all the ordering in Japanese. All the meat came raw and we had to cook it over charcoal on little grills in our table. We had two grills and 6 people. Since our hosts also know that Jess and I generally don’t care to eat things that live in the sea, we stayed with the beef and pork options. Sometimes it was better not to know what part of the beef it was…We did try salted beef tongue. Ironically, it was chewy, which really messed with my head. We also had pork, skirt steak, beef with miso paste on top…they just kept ordering and we kept eating. I washed it all down with a kiwi sour cocktail. Then we had dessert, which was this amazing little cream puff pastry that we heated on the grill and added vanilla ice cream on top before you ate it. After we filled our bellies, it was time to burn some calories with a little karaoke.

We walked down to the first karaoke place, it was FULL! So, on to place #2, Big Echo Entertainment, luckily they had a room for us. Here in Japan, karaoke is different than karaoke in the States. Here, you and your group rent a room, which is about 8x10 with some booth seating and a couple of tables. The room has a big screen where the lyrics and completely random videos are shown as you sing. I still don’t know what beach frolicking has to do with Mack the Knife…anyway, you put the numbers in and you sing your heart out. There are microphones, sound systems and tambourines to complete your performance. Oh wait, there is a commonality between karaoke here and in the States – drinking! The drinks are free flowing at the karaoke place and people certainly are not sober. Now, I know you all are dying to know, did Kiki sing? OF COURSE! When in Rome…in a tribute to a friend of mine, my sister and I sang Bust a Move by Young MC. Rocked it, I must say, burned 5.7kcals. After every song, the screen would tell you how many calories you burned singing. Entertaining and aerobic! We rented the booth for 2 hours and I really did have a blast. So much fun.