KTV

KTV-karaoke- is very popular here. It's rather alien to my British sensibilities. You go into a large hotel like building, along marbled corridors with blacked out soundproof doors leading in all directions. Every now and then you can hear caterwauling through a half open door. Eventually a minion with a black earpiece brings you to your room, which is all neon lights and black sofas with a large tv screen. There is an inhouse alcohol store to fuel your singing. You pick songs from a machine and in theory the accompanying music video then plays. However in cheaper places they just have some random video-bizarrely either of 80's styled western women wandering around some mediterranean city Pretending They Are Not Being Filmed or of some asian school girls crying in the rain over some comatose asian school boy also crying with make up everywhere OH MY GOD THE ANGST.

It is normally rather entertaining although when I went on Friday, I didn't enjoy it as much as I finally actually went with Asian people. This lead to lots of Korean, Japanese and Chinese songs, which I don't know. I can't even try to sing along as I can't read Japanese at all, Korean only very slowly and the Chinese is often done using traditional characters, which again I can't read fast enough. But I had a go with an English song, as none of the others knew them very well it was just me singing and I don't really like solo performances... So I sang a few and, as my throat had been teaching all day, decided to sit back and enjoy my introduction to K-pop (Korean pop music). This then led to one lad, who, however nice he is the rest of the time, is a twat when drunk, deciding I needed to be encouraged to join in and kept trying to make me sing. I didn't like this. Then he finally took my ignoring him for a no and tried to harass another Chinese guy to join in. This annoyed me as people don't like being put in the spotlight to perform. People enjoy things in different ways. The Chinese guy had said he didn't like KTV or singing (rare for a Chinese guy- one thing I've noticed is that most Chinese seem pretty good at singing and take any chance to do it) but he was enjoying being with his friends while they enjoyed themselves. No need to make him so uncomfortable.

I left early. To my untrained ear, K-pop all sounds the same. Plus the random added English phrases everywhere ("bounce it bounce it bounce it") annoy me.