Karaoke and Real Japanese food

We had a fun weekend filled with some uniquely Japanese experiences. I don't know how karaoke works in the U.S., but I suspect it isn't well. We went to complex (the only possibly word) for karaoke, you rent out private rooms, they have thousands of songs in the catalog, english and japanese (also Korean and Chinese too I think, but I could barely read the Japanese so I didn't bother). Lots of fun, we sang a lot of songs, there should be some pictures.

I know a lot of people say things like "I can't sing karaoke/dance unless I've had enough to drink." Well, apparently the Japanese think of people like that, because we were thrilled to find that for about 800 Yen (maybe 8 dollars?) we could have all we could drink for an hour, they'd just keep bringing the drinks. Definitely a good deal, and at the end of the hour, those who ordered drinks were in good spirits!

That was Friday night, on Sunday afternoon we went with Meghan, another English teacher in Murakami and her boyfriend Yuya to a Japanese seafood restaurant. When we first got the food, I was pretty stunned. Lots of seaweed and basically lots of stuff that I would never have thought of eating. Shame I forgot to get a picture, but I want to put into writing that I promise to produce a picture of a meal like that, since I'm sure there'll be more. An entire fried fish is not a common sight back home, I don't think. It was pretty good, but I'm not keen on eating a thing from a shell so fresh that there's little bits of gritty sand crunching between my teeth.

Maria starts (started) work today, and the kids begin going to school tomorrow, so we should have some new stuff to post somewhat soon!