trip to island - karaoke

We went to Odaiba island, which apparently didn’t exist 15 years ago. We took a monorail across the Rainbow Bridge to get there. Once on the island we shopped and shopped. There are differently-themed malls. One was old-timey japan, another named Venus Fort, was supposed to be like Italy inside, with dusk-colored sky all day. So cool. We wandered and had some Italian food. We almost got the very Italian curry, tuna and potato pizza, but ended up with pepperoni instead. We watched the sun go down and the lights of Tokyo turning on across the bay.



rainbow bridge from odaiba island


gan at venus fort, i mean italy


My last post about the wacky game center simulations was before we went to Odaiba, where I witnessed the walking-a-dog game, and the stand-up comedian game, which I didn’t really understand but apparently involves punching the comic when he tells a bad joke. We rode the big ferris wheel which “in 1999 was recorded by Guinness as the largest in the world.” I guess the record has been broken since.

Last night we had a crazy karaoke box night. In japan karaoke isn’t quite the same. The preferred karaoke delivery system is the karaoke box, in which your group gets its own room with table, tv monitor and karaoke system. You select your songs and take turns. You can call and order food and drinks to be brought to you. You pay by the hour. The place we went to was six floors of these boxes, maybe 30 or 40 boxes each floor lined up like small hotel rooms. Dave, two other fellows and I rocked the box for two hours. The group I was with was feeling very punk rock that night. I would leave the box to use the restroom and coming back down the hallway I could only hear the singing and screaming of my compadres, even though every box on that floor looked full.



(addendum - odaiba island was actually made from silt in the harbor - which i am sure contained some garbage