I would like to introduce Japanese pop culture and entertainment, "Karaoke". I suppose you've already known that "Karaoke" was born in Japan, and now, it is very popular entertainment around the world. "Karaoke" is an abbreviation word for "Kara Orchestra". "Kara" means empty, so"Karaoke" means melody without voices. In Japan, we have about 10.000 Karaoke boxes. Hirakata city also has Karaoke box in front of Hirakata station. Karaoke is very popular in Japan because it is fun to sing songs, and it also reduce our stresses. Moreover, it is cheap. You can sing songs as much as you want until 9 p.m, and it costs only 800yen! Therefore, Karaoke is popular entertainment among high school students and college students. Karaoke entertains not only young people but also adult people. Some people go to karaoke after they drink in a bar with their friends. It is called "Nijikai" which means post-party party. Karaoke appears in a wedding reception too. In Japan, we have a custom to hold wedding reception when we get marry. We invite our families, relatives, collegues and friends. At the wedding reception, friends or collegues of bride and groom often sing songs to celebrate them. Those songs are usually about marriage or love songs. We use karaoke then. I, myself, was invited to a wedding reception of my friend in March, and sang a song with my friends. I was glad she appriciated our song.
Here is one short clip about modern Japanese wedding reception.
Here is one short clip about modern Japanese wedding reception.
The instrument of karaoke has improved today. Before, it was the instrument for just singing songs. However, we have a system that our songs are graded now. It also calculates how much you burned calories when you finish singing a song. Karaoke will keep on entertaining us.
Here is link to the homepage of "Jankara" which is one of popular Karaoke box in Japan. It is written in Japanese. It has some information about the Karaoke box such as fee, foods and drinks.
http://jankara.ne.jp/index.html
Karaoke, invented in Kobe, is a great topic for pop culture and globalization as well. Many students from previous semesters have posted on this subject which seems to indicate its popularity and importance. Anthropologist Bill Kelly wrote an interesting article on karaoke which can be found here
ReplyDeletehttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6mqM8m-sJY4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=The+Worlds+of+Japanese+Popular+Culture:+Gender,&ots=kO42t-aYo5&sig=XvI_wyKIPFzJstI9ORissKUqPPw#v=onepage&q=&f=false
(scroll down to page 75).
I think you are missing a photo in this post. Also, please set the default language to English.