It finally happened. I was almost through my whole 12 months in Japan without once going to a karaoke palace, and I was happy with that. But no, it was not to be. Last night, my perfect record was ruined as I was dragged off to a “second party” following my farewell dinner with teachers from Mukaiyama.

Let me start with the dinner. It was the more pleasant part of the evening, the part I would prefer to remember. Kamiyama-sensei had arranged everything, when I said I had no real preference or specific ideas about where to go. It turned out to be a very nice traditional Japanese restaurant, and the party was fairly small. It was mostly just the English department and a few of the teachers who have been especially nice to me, like tiny little Ms. Handa, who sat across from me last academic year, and the current 1-5 homeroom teacher, who always likes to talk to me from the end of our row of desks. Ms. Kokuta wanted to come, but had to stay at school overnight with the girls’ volleyball and basketball teams. She gave me a present of two more Kitty-chan phone danglies, because she remembered me buying the one in Fukushima. Also, the kyoto-sensei wanted to come, but he had to go visit another teacher in the hospital. I found out later that the restaurant was one of his favorites, so I think he suggested it.

The dinner was a procession of about 7 courses, all meticulously arranged. My favorite was the long, skinny rectangular plates of three little bite-sized arrangements of fish and meat, with a flying fish fin standing as the decoration in the middle. I also liked the tower of tempura squares, with one tempura-ed asparagus shoot leaning on the tower at an angle. Additionally, I wasn’t the only one not drinking alcohol, which made everything that much less awkward when dealing with ordering drinks.

I was sitting across from Kamiyama-sensei, and in between Mr. Yokota and Mr. Kasahara. No Japanese party, particularly a farewell party, is complete without speeches, so each person had to take a turn in addition to the opening, closing, and toast speeches. Mr. Yokota, who was my supervisor last year, gave his speech after a number of beers, and spent much of the time asking me if I remembered my first day in Sendai, when he had come to pick me up from the BOE after the arrival ceremony. This brought up the story of how they decided on the kanji characters for my hanko with Mr. Yamagata, so my hanko had to be passed around and inspected. Mr. Kasahara’s speech was actually very quiet and serious, surprising many of the other teachers as being rather out of character.

But then Mr. Kasahara needed to go home to his children, and Ms. Chiba needed to go home to study, since she was taking the test to become a full-time teacher today, so the first party broke up. I would have been just as happy to go home then, but I was informed that Mr. Kikuchi had given money when he found out he couldn’t come, (due to having to visit the parents of a student being disciplined), and we simply had to use it to go sing karaoke. And wouldn’t you know, there was a karaoke palace just around the corner! Oh, goody!

There were only 5 of us who went, me, Mr. Yokota, Mr. Kamiyama, and two other teachers. All of them were men at least twice my age, and when they declined the nomihodai (all you can drink) option for the karaoke package, it set a kind of tame mood. Thank goodness. Most of the songs chosen were the ever popular Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, or the Eagles. There was some Celine Dion and Louis Armstrong thrown in for good measure. When Eric Clapton’s “Change the World” came up, you could definitely tell it was a group of nerdy English teachers, because in between verses, the comment was, “Hey, look, it’s all in the subjunctive!”

The funniest thing was the video playing behind the words. Because most of the songs chosen were oldies from before the era of music videos, the karaoke company just had random scenery from various large cities around the world, most notably London, Rome, San Francisco, and New York. Except all the footage was from the 80s, so the Twin Towers still existed and ugly cars figured prominently in street scenes. Only the two Japanese songs seemed to have videos that tried to match the songs. When Puff the Magic Dragon came up, the video was not the world scenery, but instead this incredibly 80s-chic Japanese woman walking around looking pensive outdoors, at one point pouring bottled water out artistically so she could watch it fall.

I sort of sang two songs. Fortunately for me, the microphone didn’t pick up my voice almost at all. I have noticed that many Japanese people have amazing mastery of handheld microphones, such as students at the school festival and whatnot, and now I know why. Because they’re all obsessed with karaoke. Maybe I wasn’t holding the microphone right, or whatever, but I’m grateful for small favors. Also, I think Kamiyama-sensei was right when he said later that no one pays attention when other people are singing anyway, since they’re all looking for the next song they want to sing in the book. Perhaps that is also out of self-defense, since I also noticed that there is something about karaoke that makes everyone try to sing in a really stupid falsetto.

So I survived karaoke. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It is also not something I would willingly subject myself to ever again. But now I’ve done it, so my Japanese experience is complete. Guess there’s nothing to do now but go home, right?