Archive for category Karaoke
September 23, 2004 – Stand By Your Man
Posted by Barniferous in Friends and coworkers, Karaoke on September 23, 2014
Tonight was Thursday Night Karaoke in Yokohama with the usual crew. I try to challenge myself with a new song or two each time. Tonight I sang “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots, which turned out pretty well. Later on I was inspired by The Blues Brothers and tried to sing “Stand By Your Man”. Jem came in on the duet, and completely took over the song. Somehow her British accent was completely replaced by a perfect Tammy Wynette southern twang which left us all with our jaws on the floor. Serious talent!
September 16, 2004 – NHL for Playstation!
Posted by Barniferous in Karaoke on September 16, 2014
EA Sports NHL 2002 – Japanese edition
One of the teachers I work with was shopping at a used game store, and found a Japanese copy of NHL 2002 for Playstation 2. The EA Sports NHL games did not get a large release in Japan, so this was a very rare find. Knowing it might not be around for long, he bought it for me and gave me the option of paying him for it, or having him return to the store. I had my wallet out in seconds, and resisted the urge to hug him.
After work I went to karaoke and rocked the MC Hammer classic “U Can’t Touch This”, among other songs.
September 12, 2004 – Karaoke!
Posted by Barniferous in Karaoke on September 12, 2014
After a relaxing day at Keikyu school, I went to an impromptu farewell party for the former head teacher at Kawasaki NOVA. He was moving on to NOVA’s head office in Osaka to work on the new textbooks.
In addition to his promotion, he was also the winner of the Kawasaki NOVA Olympic medal pool. He generously treated everyone to drinks at Hub Pub with his winnings. After Hub we went to karaoke. I love karaoke!
One of the regular songs in my karaoke rotation is “Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears. Tonight I ad-libbed some reasonably inappropriate lyrics that I won’t reprint here. They did get a good laugh from my coworkers.
August 18, 2004 – Schedule uncorrected
Posted by Barniferous in Karaoke, Teaching English on August 20, 2014
Last week I was happy to learn that I would be back in Kawasaki NOVA on Wednesdays allowing me to teach my good kids class. Today I found out that the schedule had been changed back again after a week. The one time I actually enjoy teaching a kids class…
After work I went to a farewell karaoke party for Scottish Steven. Good times were had by all, and I think I found someone who sings worse than I do!
July 29, 2004 – Happy birthday to me!
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Karaoke, Keikyu-Kawasaki NOVA, Lux on August 15, 2014
Happy birthday to me! I turned 26 today!
I got woken up in the morning with a birthday call from my parents. Lux gave me some presents including a six pack of Labatt Blue. I love Japanese beer, but it’s always good to drink something Canadian when I get a chance. Canadian beer brings back a lot of good memories.
Work was a very relaxing day at Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA. After work, the usual Thursday night karaoke became birthday karaoke. The regular Thursday karaoke group is usually about 6-8 people. Tonight we had about double that. I had the best of intentions to be sensible with nomi-hodai, but ended up having a little too much fun.
July 15, 2004 – Return to karaoke
Posted by Barniferous in Karaoke, Keikyu-Kawasaki NOVA on August 11, 2014
Today was notable for three reasons:
- I got my first full time paycheck! Much nicer than my part time paychecks! Yay!
- It was my first shift at Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA in 2 months. Keikyu is always more relaxing than Kawasaki NOVA. Also, most of the students actually remembered me and asked where I had been.
- It was my first time at Thursday night karaoke in a few weeks. Karaoke and beer = good!
June 6, 2004 pt1 – Kamakura in the Rain
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, Karaoke, Team Awesome Sauce, The Penpal on June 18, 2014
A rainy day in Kamakura.
Today was the last full day in Japan for my visitors. Breaking with our trend, we all actually got up early. The plan for the day was to meet The Penpal and her friends in Kamakura and see some of the sights. It was raining steadily as we left Hello House for the station.
We met up with The Penpal and friends, and got a quick lunch before sightseeing. During lunch, Flounder was trying to teach some rude English to the Japanese people in our group. He was trying to convince them that “motherf**ker” was a commonly used word between friends, and provided various examples. I think Flounder believes that we all live in a 70’s blaxploitation film.
After lunch we started our sightseeing at Hachiman-gu shrine. Despite the rain we saw yet another traditional wedding. From Hachiman-gu we walked to Daibutsu. By this point the rain was bucketing down and we were all soaked, even with umbrellas. Almost nobody carries an umbrella in Winnipeg, so Code Red, Hippie, Green and Flounder were all having umbrella fights as we walked.
The giant bronze Buddha of Kamakura
At Daibutsu we spent most of our time under cover trying to stay out of the rain. Since the rain didn’t let up, we decided to go back towards the station and find an indoor activity to do. We went to – you guess it – another game center. The game center had a large selection of print club machines. Print club machines are large photo booths that are popular with teenage girls. You can take your pictures with various backgrounds and then draw on the pictures or add cute pictures. At the end the machine prints out copies of your pictures. We loaded all 8 guys in our group into the print club machine and took some ridiculous pictures. After the game center, we found some nearby karaoke where we sang and ate.
We returned to Hello House soaked to the bone after a fun day. Going to Kamakura is always good, but today was was even more exciting because I got to introduce my girlfriend to my friends.
June 3, 2004 pt2 – All you can drink is not a challenge
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Karaoke, Shenanigans, Team Awesome Sauce on June 15, 2014
The floor is lava at Big Echo karaoke
(Author’s note) My memories of the evening are a bit fuzzy, and the notes from my original blog post are vague, so I am doing my best to reconstruct the events.
After witnessing the 20 Frosty challenge in the morning, we all had a relaxing afternoon at Hello House before heading out in the evening for Thursday evening karaoke. Green was still not feeling well, so he was a lot more restrained than usual. I believe the rest of the group decided to do some pre-drinking at Hello House.
We rode Nanbu line to Kawasaki and then took Tokaido line to Yokohama in order to meet up with my usual Thursday evening karaoke group. When everyone assembled, we all walked to Big Echo. Unlike the previous week, Code Red had left his video camera back at Hello House.
We had two fun hours of karaoke, making good use of the “all you can drink” policy of our karaoke room. Green was not drinking much, so Flounder, Hippie, Code Red, and I all decided to pick up the slack.
During the evening, one of Jem’s roommates, let’s call her Rana, was flirting with Code Red hard. Code Red was wearing a t-shirt featuring Stewie from Family Guy. On the walk back to Yokohama station, Jem’s roommate told Code Red that she really liked his shirt, and wanted to trade. Code Red did not want to trade his Stewie shirt for Rana’s shirt. She kept asking, and he kept refusing.
At this point, Green, Flounder, Hippie and I decided to act like helpful gentlemen and get Rana the shirt she wanted. We grabbed Code Red and pulled off his Stewie shirt while we were walking through the shopping area of Yokohama station. We handed the shirt to Rana, and then she proceeded to remove her shirt to give to Code Red.
While Code Red was shirtless, we all started slapping his exposed back, leaving huge red hand prints. Yes, this is the kind of thing that drunk frat boys do when they like each other.
Unsurprisingly, the spectacle of a shirtless gaijin guy being attacked by his friends while a gaijin female removed her shirt in a major train station attracted some attention. We received a lot of stares and laughs from people passing by, and also got noticed by the train station security staff, who watched us carefully as we bought tickets and waited on the platform.
Although he probably could have turned the “give my shirt back” game into a night outside of Hello House, Code Red instead insisted that he get his Stewie t-shirt back before our train came. Rana reluctantly agreed and they again swapped shirts.
At some point during our excitement, we actually lost Hippie for a few minutes. I can’t exactly remember the details, but he did turn up before the train left.
Through most of our adventures so far, Green had been the drunk crazy guy. With Green taking it easy, we all stepped up our game. As it turned out, our group was better when we only had one designated drunk crazy guy rather than four.
May 30, 2004 – I just told her it was small, didn’t I?
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Greater Tokyo Area, Karaoke, Shenanigans on June 7, 2014
Where’s my microphone??
An uneventful day relaxing at Hello House was followed up with an eventful evening out in Kawasaki.
Code Red, Green, Flounder, Hippie got on Nanbu line headed towards Kawasaki, where we would meet up with some of my coworkers and friends. On the train, Green asked me how to say “you are beautiful” in Japanese so he could talk to some ladies. I got an evil idea, and then spent the rest of the train ride practicing Green’s new Japanese phrase, which was absolutely not “you are beautiful”.
We met with Jem and Rivers and went to a nearby izakaya for some food and drinks. By this point I had informed everyone except Green the meaning of the words that I had been teaching to Green. We were all having trouble containing our excitement. Green practiced a few more times to try to get the pronunciation correct, and then waited for his opportunity.
We pressed the order button in the izakaya – a wonderful invention that summons your waiter or waitress to your table. An attractive female waitress arrived and took the order for our group. At this point Green spoke up with the phrase he had been rehearsing for the past 30 minutes.
“Excuse me” he said in Japanese. The waitress turned and looked at Green. You could cut the anticipation in our group with a knife.
“I have a small penis” said Green proudly in Japanese. The waitress looked confused. Green, assuming his pronunciation was bad decided to repeat the phrase slower and more clearly.
“I – have – a – small – penis!” he repeated, again with a smile on his face. At this point the waitress started laughing and walked away, which caused our entire group to crack up laughing hysterically. Green realized what happened “I just told her it was small, didn’t I?” he cleverly guessed.
Green asked me how to explain to the waitress that it wasn’t small, but actually very large. I taught him how to say “very small” instead. His BS detector went off and he decided to give up on the whole idea.
After the izakaya, we went out to karaoke again. Karaoke quickly became the fun activity of choice for our group, mainly due to the incredibly cheap drinks. We spent a few hours rocking out and making liberal use of the all you can drink policy before heading back to Hello House on Nanbu line. The trip home was not boring – one very drunk member of our group started walking up and down the train cars with a condom in his hand. This presented the other passengers with an excellent opportunity to pretend that he didn’t exist, which they did very well. Never a dull moment!
May 27, 2004 pt2 – Karaoke Adventure
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Karaoke, Yokohama on June 4, 2014
We met up with Rivers and Jem at Yokohama station. They were fresh out of NOVA kids training and looking for some beer. After some phone calls and texting we were able to meet up with the rest of the usual Thursday night karaoke group. All together we took a group of 15 thirsty people into Big Echo for some all you can drink karaoke.
The pitchers started flowing fast and furiously, as everyone filled the karaoke queue with an eclectic range of songs ranging from Ring of Fire to Anarchy in the UK. Code Red had his video camera out and decided to start filming our experience. After a while, Code Red took a page out of my book and started visiting other karaoke rooms. He would open the door and tell the surprised people inside “smile for American TV!”. This got a lot of smiles and cheers.
Code Red and the video camera that got us in trouble
We had a busy, beer soaked two hours of karaoke. Since it took so long to get our group together, we had only 10 minutes to catch the last train after we paid. Half way back to Yokohama station, Code Red suddenly announced that he didn’t have his video camera and then ran back to Big Echo. I quickly gave Jem some (incorrect) instructions to get Flounder, Hippie and Green on the last train and then I took off after Code Red. In the worst case I assumed that Flounder, Hippie and Green could find their way back to Hello House, and Code Red and I would find alternate transportation or a place to crash.
I waited outside Big Echo for a few minutes, and then decided to go into the building to look for Code Red. I took the only elevator up to the floor where our room was, just as Code Red was coming down the stairs. He got outside and saw that all of his friends were gone. He was on his own, drunk, in a city far from home. After a brief moment of panic, he cleverly walked up to the first gaijins he saw and asked where the station was, explaining that he needed to get to Noborito. The two Australians looked at their watch and told him, probably in an awesome Aussie accent, that he was f**ked.
After looking around for Code Red in Big Echo, I went outside to see nobody that I recognized. Just then my phone started ringing – it was Jem and she couldn’t remember which train to put the other guys on. By this point the last train back to Kawasaki had already left. On the way to the platform I received another call that Code Red had just showed up on the platform. I met up with the group and we found out that the video camera wasn’t actually missing, it was in his backpack the entire time. As a group we voted that Code Red was not allowed to talk for the next 30 minutes.
Jem and her roommates came to our rescue, offering to put us up at their NOVA apartments. We took a quick train ride to Hodogaya station and started walking. And then we walked more. And then we kept walking.
I like to complain about Hello House at times, but it is only a five minute walk from the station. Jem’s apartment was a full 15 minute walk, mostly uphill. The apartment building itself was literally built on the side of a hill with a steep 50 degree staircase. Flounder, Green and Code Red slept at Jem’s place, while Hippie and I got a spare room at the other NOVA apartment that was about half way down the steep hill.
Travel lesson for the day: before you sprint off on your own in a strange country, check your freaking backpack for your lost item. It will save some excitement.
Drinking in Japan 
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