Photo (and many of the better photos below) courtesy of Alli Van Kanegan
Most of the appeal of the Kentucky Derby is in everything that’s happening around the match: the backstory of the riders and their steeds, commentators breaking down every theoretical scenario in excruciating detail, and lots of big hats. This past spring, NBC aired a total of 15 1/2 hours of Derby-related coverage. Keep in mind this is all for a race that lasts 2 or 3 minutes.
This week, Chris and I are writing about iconic Japanese forms of entertainment. We have already talked about Noh and bugaku (although we have yet to talk about kabuki or bunraku), and Chris is currently writing about our sumo experience. Here, I want to share a little bit about Japanese karaoke.
After living in Japan for almost a year, Chris and I have done our fair share of karaoke, and I have to say, Japanese karaoke is 100x more fun than karaoke in the US. Here are some reasons why.
A few weeks into life in Kyoto, Katie receives a Facebook message from Christoffer, a friend she hadn’t seen in a few years. He’d seen that we were now living in Kyoto and, as luck would have it, he was about to visit Japan on his honeymoon, along with his wife Gabriela. Once their tour of Nihon was complete, they were settling in for the first year or so of marriage in Australia, so they could relate to the whole living abroad thing. We met at a mostly vegetarian buffet restaurant called Obanzai. That’s both the name of the place and the name of a type of cuisine. (The Japanese equivalent of tapas: lots of side dishes elevated to meal status.) This caused some confusion when we asked a few locals if they knew how to find Obanzai and we were pointed in ten different directions.
A week or two later, I hopped on a bus for Nagoya. Carlos, my former neighbor and one of my oldest friends, was in town for a business trip. This was my first experience outside of Kyoto (aside from landing at the Kansai International Airport and the subsequent train ride) and my first view of Japan’s highway system. The bus was significantly cheaper and significantly slower than the train, but I had a lot of writing to do, and the bus gave me a quiet place to do it.
A view from the hotel built on top of Nagoya’s train station
Our Kyoto Year 