Karaoke, Japan style

As you may have noticed, no one has posted to the blog in quite a while. We've been pretty busy in the evenings working on our project (the video) and doing other crazy things. I will try to post a couple of things now.

A few days ago, some of us went over to Jinbocho, an area of town famous for its old books. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it was. There was some kind of big street festival going on (which seems to happen a lot here...), so we got a ton of delicious, cheap street food and watched some music for a bit. Then we checked out some of the book stores, some of which had hand-printed or wood block-printed editions of manuscripts. Here is an image of one:


Later that night, Mark and I went over to some of Mark's friends houses to eat dinner, and at about 11 we had to decide: do we leave now, or miss the last train home, waiting until 4:30 am to get the first train?

We decided to stay. We went out to a karaoke bar, which is what everyone does in these situations. Here in Japan, karaoke works a bit differently, with small individual rooms that you and your friends cram into. It was tons of fun, but the next day was a complete waste, as we didn't go to bed until about 6:30 am. Here are some fun images of karaoke:


All in all, a fun time.