No.
That's enough about filling out forms for now. If you read my past blog posts you might get the impression that all we do here is fill out forms and angst about the Japanese school system. In fact, although it's hard to completely get rid of that underlying feeling of being out of place that comes with living in a foreign country, for the most part we've had a lot of fun and have really enjoyed ourselves. There have been many times when we've had great outings as a family and I came back promising to blog about it, but ironically those are the times I least feel the need to blog. I guess the satisfaction of having a good day is enough without me having to reflect on it. But now that we're about halfway through the trip, I think giving a little blog space to what's been fun is long overdue. And who knows, if this entry goes long enough maybe I'll divide it up and give two or three entries to the topic instead.
We've done plenty of touristy stuff, seeing the sights and that kind of thing, but I think I'll save talking about those until later. Some of the things that have been the most fun have been just doing regular "Japan stuff" ... like karaoke. Now, for the record, I don't particularly like the way karaoke is done in the US, up on a stage in a bar or restaurant. I think it plays to both the narcissism of the performer and the desire to mock others of the audience. There can be a good vibe when the crowd is supportive and everybody is just there to have a good time, but even at its best I think it's much more about playacting, living out the fantasy of being on American Idol, than it is about singing. And I really like singing.
In Japan, the most common way to sing karaoke is at a "karaoke box," which really means karaoke room. You sing in a room with your friends and family rather than in front of a group of strangers. Basically you are assigned a room based on your group size and pay an hourly per-person rate. You can order food and drinks to the room if you like, but even if you don't order anything the soft drink/coffee bar is included in the base price and you can get away with spending less than an outing to the movies. In the room, everybody takes turns selecting songs to sing on a little computerized remote control. Usually when it's your turn you pick up the mike to sing by yourself, but we tend to do a lot more communal singing. We're just lucky our kids have good taste in music. Not everything we might want to sing is available, but the place we usually go has a pretty nice selection including Katy Perry's "Roar" and "Let it Go" from Frozen for Mikki, Bastille's "Pompeii" and Imagine Dragons for Eli, and enough... er... "classics" to keep me and Jocelyn happy. And the kids are great singers! The first time we went there was a bit of nervousness, but they got over that quickly and just went for it. They even learned a few Japanese songs at school and surprised us by how well they could pull it off learning just by rote, without a full understanding of what they were singing. The kids love it, to the point where Eli requested we go to karaoke for part of his birthday celebration, and the kids insisting on going to karaoke with their grandmother when she visited.We've also gone to the "game center," or arcade a couple of times. In some ways they resemble the kind of arcades they have at Craig's Cruisers or Chuck E Cheese, but they have a lot more variety, for all different ages and interest levels. Jocelyn can't stand the noise, so she doesn't usually join us for these outings, but there was definitely enough to hold the kids' interest.
One of the kids' favorite games is "Drum Master," in which you have to pound on a Japanese "taiko" drum along with the rhythm of various songs. You follow the on-screen prompt that shows you whether to pound the drum in the middle or tap on the side, as well as the rhythm to follow. At the easy level it's pretty basic, but as the level goes up it can get pretty intense. I've seen people playing a fast song on expert mode and it looks like they should be charging admission. In fact, there is a whole genre of "rhythm games" in Japan, appealing to a wide range of players. The only examples you usually see in the US seem to be Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, both of which they also have here, but there are also a wide variety of other games which rely on matching your hands or body to various motions onscreen, in a way that's as much fun to watch as it is to play. In fact, for me it's a lot more fun to watch than it is to play, since the humiliation of the way I would look doing this in front of a bunch of strangers would probably be too much for my fragile ego... particularly when many of the strangers are the kind of people who are so good at these games that they bring their own special gloves to wear while playing them. These games are made as much for adults as for kids. In fact, there are huge areas of many arcades that aren't for kids at all. There are horse racing simulators and mah jongg games, battle simulations in which you bring in your own cards with all your armies and stats stored on them, "medal" games that use tokens but look a lot like the slot machine section of a casino, and crane games with... um... somewhat inappropriately dressed figurines as the prizes.
But while most of these are targeted at adults, there are also plenty of kid-friendly versions as well. While the crane games on the upper floors offer more mature fare, the lower level is filled with stuffed animals and little snacks to appeal to the kids. And while many of the "medal" games are closer to gambling than just gaming, the kids also enjoyed playing one where they shot the medals into a coin pusher device in order to advance Mario on-screen, win a chance to grab little balls and add them to the mix with an internal crane game and win a jackpot of little medals when you sink a big ball of the edge. Clearly the Japanese have surpassed us when it comes to enjoyment technology.Well, I think I'll end the post here, but I see that I've managed to talk all about being merry with very little about eating or drinking. I'll save that, as well as the promised "touristy-stuff" for a later post.
