Comments on: Singing Karaoke with Foucault

By: On Watching Video Art in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

On Watching Video Art in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:41:20 +0000

[…] It seems like a fantasy I had often in Japan – one that gave me a weird desire to constantly revitalize semi-private places into drinking events, with a bottle of wine in a phone booth or empty train car. The idea that these spaces could be transformed into sites where the rigid social order could be abandoned and a real self could emerge was full of potential. (One example is the karaoke booth). […]

By: 41 Things I Like About Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

41 Things I Like About Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:01:10 +0000

[…] of drunken strangers, you can book a room with drunken friends and endure each other’s wails. Karaoke is a grand way of connecting on a level that didn’t exist for me in America: Sitting around, […]

By: Owls (@owls_mcgee)

Owls (@owls_mcgee) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:36:17 +0000

“Walking on Broken Glass” is a perfect karaoke jam. Thanks :)

By: miyazaki_g

miyazaki_g — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:20:17 +0000

Dude, I want to marry your brain and its indubitable reasoning!

I stumbled onto your blog a while back and have been consistently awed, amused, amazed and inspired by your blatantly blasé (or blithely blatant… it’s a toss-up) insights into Japanese culture and life through the gaijin lens. You supply observationally jaded, ‘darker emotional disposition (sic.)’ and a truckload of meta-delights in a way that makes me happy down to the tips of my resembles-antique-maternity-wear indoor slippers… I salute you! More vapidly put: AMAZBALLS!

Also, “Walking on Broken Glass” via masculine falsetto… not even the unending flow of vodka and accoutrements could sufficiently quash a Western twinge of 当惑, but the obligatory applause afterwards was counter-intuitively validating… fml.

’nuff said now, THE END (keep up the awesome posts and insights!)
G

By: On Wacky Japan (or: On Pretending to Have Fun in Japan) | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:05:33 +0000

[...] The politeness, the cultivated appearance of agreement, preserving perfect surfaces, and the refusal to tell the truth (and to do it, maddeningly, “without lying”): All of it is profoundly Japanese, and cracks in that surface are rare (see Karaoke). [...]

By: On Drinking Too Much in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

On Drinking Too Much in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:32:24 +0000

[...] Nomihodai “Nomihodai” has been covered here before: Bars, Karaoke Booths, or restaurants offer up as much alcohol as you want for a set price and time, usually meaning [...]

By: On Getting Ramen (and a Hangover) in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:38:54 +0000

[...] to get energy into your body in the short-term, but we end up spending that energy on late-night karaoke [...]

By: On Getting Lucky in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

On Getting Lucky in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:59:20 +0000

[...] traditional Japanese style – that is, 12 hours of drinking in English pubs, followed by karaoke and visits to shrines before crashing to bed at 6 a.m. By the wee hours of the morning – [...]