The J-List crew had fun at our official company New Year’s Party on Friday, consuming lots of good food and sake as we all officially promised to gambarimasu — to do our best and work hard — for our customers in the new year. Afterwards we went to belt out some songs at the “karaoke box” near the J-List office. I was amazed at the thickness of the karaoke song book on the table, which had grown over the past few years into a Shonen Ace-esque 800 pages featuring just about any song you could want to sing. Best of all for members of the otaku generation, the number of offerings from anime and video games at karaoke boxes these days is incredible, with every song from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Macross Frontier plus a heaping portion of Miku Hatsune tunes, too. I’d made use of karaoke ever since my early days of learning Japanese since it’s fun, gives you positive social feedback and exposes you to lots of kanji words, but the number of anison (anime songs) to be found in a karaoke book in the 80s was nothing compared to the rich bounty available today. If you’re interested in learning to sing some Japanese songs, we recommend the iTunes Japan prepaid cards that we sell — most songs have karaoke versions available.
Karaoke can also be a fun study tool — you can even remember better if you how the song goes.
