The Karaoke Conspiracy

I have somehow become Eun-hyuk's Beyblade opponent. Permanently.

He got a bunch of these tops with launchers and plastic arenas to battle them in. They bounce against each other with metallic clinks and the last top spinning wins. There's also an anime about it, OF COURSE. There's an anime about children's card games. There's an anime about freakin' bread-baking. Japan can make anything into a tournament-style shonen title.

Anyway, I put together all the tops and showed him how to launch them to keep him busy while his parents made dinner last night. But now he associates me with the game, apparently, because whenever he sees me he dives for the Beyblade box. I spin my top, he throws his into the ring and bats them both around with the launcher string, and whatever the result he says with a big smile on his face, "Eun-hyuk: dongurami! Nuna: ex!" While doing this, he makes exaggerated "circle" and "X" motions with his arms, as if announcing that he gets to move up in the tournament while I am knocked out of the running. Then he battles me again. And again.

And here's the shameful part: it's actually really fun! Say what you want about shonen anime, but they sure know how make addictive TV shows with toy tie-ins. Just look at Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon. America could learn a thing or two. I don't think we've had a successful TV show promoting a line of toys since Transformers.

This evening I met two of Kris's co-workers who wanted to have bi-weekly meetings with me to practice their English. We chatted about anything we could think of for an hour, and they were very nice. Their English is very good, if a little rusty. I'll see them again on Monday.

And after that, Kris took me out to a noraebang.

I guess she took pity on me after I kept saying how much I wanted to go. I think the place we went had a better selection of English songs than most American karaoke bars! They had tons of really recent, fun ones. And they had, I swear this is true...

 ...Dick in a Box. Yeah. Seriously. (I'm sorry about the picture orientation, but I've tried everything and it refuses to appear horizontally. I don't know why).

Also, I have discovered the secret of why Asians like karaoke so much more than Americans do. I had thought that all Asians were just really good singers, or that they weren't as bashful as Americans about singing on stage. It turns out, the secret is the echo effect. In American karaoke bars, they give you a normal microphone. Your voice with all its flaws and all its wrong notes is blasted for everyone to hear. (By the way this, the reason why most people hate karaoke, is why I love it. Call me a narcissist, but I like the sound of my own singing voice.)

But in the noraebang we went to, the echo effect was turned up so high that whether you were on key or not, the sound it produced was just a warbly mess. I'll have to go to more than just the one to confirm, but my suspicion is that Asia uses echoey microphones to convince people that they are good singers. I mean, somewhere in that reverberating range of notes is what you were actually singing, and conceivably it could have been the right note. Thus, inflated confidence and higher attendance. Ingenious.