Karaoke, Karaoke and more Holidays!

---

Mioka and her family love karaoke. Like, really, really, love it. Mioka and I had to be at school on Saturday due to it being the 60th anniversary, but Mioka's mother and brother went to sing at the local karaoke joint. The 60th anniversary "celebration" took place in a concert hall by Odori Station, and consisted of speeches and a concert. Many of the previous principles and staff were there to make appearances, and each of the four principles had to make a speech. Speeches alone took about and hour to and hour and a half! Not the most interesting thing in the world, no matter where you are.
After the speeches concluded, there was a "twenty minute" intermission, which didn't actually last for twenty minutes. It was just the time frame given to band students to set up chairs, stands and percussion instruments. The set up was quick, maybe ten minutes, as there were only about forty students in the band. The band played two songs, one being a local song (not the national anthem, but perhaps the school's song, or a traditional folk song?) It seemed to be common since the band had memorized the piece and many students in the audience were humming or singing along. They also played a less common song, not memorized, which sounded like one of the songs played in Hayao Miyazaki's movies, but I can't be sure. Tsukisamu High School also offers a mandolin course, similar to string ensemble. These students played three songs, accompanied by one of the previous principles who could play the flute. He was VERY good. The school bands played for about an hour, and then the flutist played many duets with a pianist. It was quite a nice concert.... at first. However, it was supposed to end at 3:30, and possibly would have if not for some mysterious person backstage who kept telling the flutist to do an encore performance. And so, the flutist performed again, went backstage, only to be required to do another encore. The poor man had to walk back and play four encores before everyone decided they had had enough. By they way, it was now 4 o'clock. The whole experience reminded me of one of our band performances, except that there is no one to shush you back home. >_<

Afterwards, Mioka and I were pretty tired, and had to take the subway back home. However when we were almost home, her mother called telling us to join her and Mihiro at karaoke, which is about a twenty minute walk from the bus stop. Argghhhh, I wanted to sleep. However I will admit that karaoke was quite fun. ^_^ But still, sleep would have been better, especially after a boring concert.



On Sunday, Mioka had made plans with some friends from school for us to go to karaoke and purikura. I have decided that public transport is not tourist friendly in the least. The subway prices are similar to a taxi, depending on where you start and where you want to go, the price will be different. Not only that, which isn't friendly for my poor wallet, but the signs displaying how much it will cost to go to each station is entirely in Japanese. So, for you tourists there, make sure your guide book has the kanji for the various stations you will be travelling to. I miss the concept of a bus pass which also works for the train. Sooo much cheaper and user friendly. Another problem I have with Sapporo's subway system is that you need a ticket to get out of the place. And because of the different price of tickets, I am being led to believe that you are somewhat screwed if you miss your stop and end up where your ticket was not meant to take you. Once again,this is merely an assumption, due to the fact that Mioka says it's bad to have the wrong ticket for a particular station. >_> I hope this isn't reality, because if it is, I shall have either walk everywhere in the future, hire a tour guide, or constantly pay for a taxi.
Karaoke was fun, although I like the local place in Nishioka much more. The variety of artists is slightly smaller, however the songs are much more recent. The place we went to this time had more artists, including those which are less known (ie. Dashboard Confidential and Deathcab for Cutie), however there weren't as many songs per artist and the majority of these songs were quite old. As in demo album old. >_< As in, well, I definately don't know these songs well enough to sing along to. Yuuri, Saori and I sang Last Christmas though, and it is now raining. >_>
Afterwards, I was taken for my first purikura experience. Fun, but a bit expensive. At least purikura machines are designed to make you look better than you actually do. They make you complexion much more even, eyes are a bit brighter, etc. This was lucky for me do to my current sleeping patterns, or perhaps I should say lack thereof. Eitherway lots of fun, and at least now I know to save a bit of money for next weekend's purikura trip with Kumi.

ps. I get to start learning grade two kanji next week! (In the past three weeks, I've learnt about 100, 20 of which I had learned previously in school, and practiced the various readings for them.) Kanji are probably my favourite thing to learn here. And the kanji diary I need to write everyday is definately not. >_<

---