~Skammie~

Last Saturday = my 1st Jrock experience

No, I was never into jrock, or any kind of rock music for that matter. (except for soft rock, I suppose, but then that’s not really rock :P) But this time I actually went to a local jrock live performance! It was from a local band that my friend Kaori’s boyfriend is a part of, called SUNDAY SLACKERS. At first, I wasn’t even going to go, but then I told Winnie and Bernice about it and they were very interested, so I though “What the heck, for $5 I’ll just go for the experience!” It turned out quite alright! 😀

About 40-50 people showed up, mostly Japanese but there were also small groups of Chinese and Caucasians. The setting was not big; just about enough for the number of people there. Because of this, the sound was quite trapped in the room and when they seriously rocked out, the drums and guitars were literally BLASTING to the point that I can’t hear people talking to me unless they went right up to my ear! It was good that in the end though, my hearing was still normal…probably because the middle third of the show was mostly softer music like this song “Ougon No Tsuki” played and sung by the bassist with only an acoustic guitar. I think he is such a good singer~

Thanks Bern for recording it and putting this vid together! ^^

So yes, for pretty much the whole show, this band of 5 Japanese guys performed cover songs and a few instrumentals. For the rock parts, they sang songs by groups like Gazette, Dir en Grey, Alice 9…whose names ring a bell for me but their music don’t. In between songs, they had mini MC sessions…in Japanese and only a few times in English. I managed to catch a few phrases enough to figure out the general ideas of what they said, but I was still quite lost most of the time *LOL* All in all, it was a good first show for them, although they did have the occasional screw ups here and there.

After the show (~10:00 pm), they had an after-party which was karaoke-ing until 2:00 am!! Even though I only knew Kaori, we (Bern, Wilfred, and myself) still decided to tag along. It was really awesome 😀 I got to meet some of the guys and sing Japanese karaoke~~ This was waay cool because up until now, I’ve only gone to Chinese/English karaoke twice i think, and both times people were just not that fun. This time though, it was great because I got to listen to good music and vocals, the most hilarious monomanes, while practicing my kanji readings at the same time! Not to mention the beer made a couple of the guys drunk which was EVEN FUNNIER, especially 1) when they were so willing to sing when they totally wouldn’t before and 2) when one of them tried to pick me up and throw me at another guy who was making fun of him, and suddenly realized what he was doing right when he was about to do so. He kept apologizing to me afterwards~ HAHAH 😀

But still the best part of this karaoke session was that I was surrounded by an almost-all-Japanese-speaking environment (they knew some English and a couple of them were fluent in it too, but I think they were more comfortable with Japanese). Since this was just casual, everyday conversations, I overheard and understood probably ~80%!~ so happy!! 😀 I spoke a few phrases in Japanese to them too! I have a feeling this is what I can expect when I go hang out with new-found friends in Japan~ I totally won’t mind ^^ Yep, I definitely got a good taste of the Japanese lifestyle on Saturday~ (well, except for when we left, the guys went straight for the cigarette…UGH! I CANNOT STAND SMOKE!!! SO GROSS!! ><)

As for songs-wise, we took turns and sang a whole mixture of different genres of Japanese songs, some of which I know and some I don’t. Of course, as a fangirl, I simply HAD to do my duty and throw in a few of the jpop songs sung by the Johnny’s, especially T&T!! In the end, I’m proud to announce that the following songs (among others like the Asian Kung Fu Generation) made it on our list: some JE songs (T&T, Arashi, KAT-TUN…I didn’t see NEWS on the song list?) and also a few other non-JE ones that I know. Too bad the karaoke vids are some random clips that look like commercials for a vacation get-away and not the actual PVs!

ps. I haven’t visited Bon-chan’s site for a week or so and now realized it’s pw protected again! And I can’t figure it out 😦 BON-CHAN, if you ever see this, can you please email me your pw if you don’t mind??

Let’s Karaoke…with the ORIGINAL PVs!