Gaijin Tonic

The other night, after another barnstorming booze binge, I clumsily fumbled with my keys outside my tiny apartment, trying not to piss-off the neighbours, before tumbling through the door. I’d had a debauched and hedonistic night with my friends in a string of bars, including a karaoke place which had a selection of novelty costumes for its patrons to wear. A mental time was had by all, and I’d used my phone camera to capture my pals and myself in various states of drunken abandon, jiving and singing in schoolgirl uniforms and the like.

Someone begged me to share these hilarious pictures over the internet, so I decided to send them from my phone to my PC, so I could stick them on Facebook. With my drunken sausage fingers I selected “ME” from the list of contacts on my phone and sent the pictures to my computer email address. Hey presto! Isn’t technology wonderful?
With hindsight, I should have waited until I was sober before attempting this minor act of technological wizardry.

When I later checked my email, the photos hadn’t arrived. Upon examining my phone I realized where I’d gone wrong. Thanks to the alcohol-induced blurred vision, I hadn’t mailed the pics to “ME,” I’d mailed them to “MIE,” who is my landlady. Mie is a rather reserved middle-aged woman, who is constantly nit-picking about the correct separation and disposal of rubbish, and other such matters. Quite what she thought when, at four AM, she received a picture of me dressed in a much-too-small monkey costume and guzzling from a pitcher of beer, is anyone’s guess but I’m expecting the eviction notice any day now.
Oh well, it could have been worse. I could have been trying to send naked pictures of myself to “Adult Friend Finder.” That would have led to all sorts of confusion.

Just as soft drugs supposedly lead to harder drugs, in Japan booze inevitably leads to… karaoke. And, my, what a nasty path that is.

Late at night, after a party, some sadistic bastard always proposes a karaoke jam, and you must then decide between the last train home, or five hours of liver abuse and aural torture in a karaoke booth. A no-brainer if you’re sober, but common sense tends to fly out the window when you’ve been drinking sake.

Once inside, the most inarticulate, slurring wino grabs the microphone, and the musical misery begins. Excessive drinking is required to drown out the cacophony.
And so you find yourself trapped for the night in a tiny room with the same handful of people. A claustrophobic, black room where men and women fight over the mike and scream themselves hoarse, emotions are laid bare, beer is spilled. It’s a bit like “Cube” or “Saw,” but with a worse soundtrack. In the karaoke box, no-one can hear you scream.

Blood, as well as beer, is often spilled. One guy I know was head-banging so vigorously to his own rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” that he smashed his face into the table -Thwack!!- and bust his head open. He was unconscious on the floor in a mess of blood for quite a while.

Aggressive lunges are made for the remote control as people squabble over whose song is next. A tambourine appears from somewhere. An inch of beer is sloshing around on the floor.
Slowly darkness descends, your vision blurs….

Eventually you wake up, ears ringing, on a bench in the street somewhere, the scuff-marks on the toes of your shoes indicating that you had been dragged there by the thankless karaoke-box staff, and you can barely believe that you had been foolish enough to go back to karaoke yet again.