Tarto in Japan

Today was the school ceremony. Very impressive! Apart from the hundred or so students, the school's administrative staff and all the teachers were attending. There are about 50 teachers (!), of which only 5 are males (!!). After we were given a brief presentation of the school, each of us had to take the microphone and make a quick self introduction. I even spotted one guy who discretely managed to skip his turn. Then we had to select one of three languages to be given detailed explanations about housing and various formalities. Given my respective abilities in Chinese and Korean, I naturally opted for English.

I then spent the afternoon at the karaoke with other students. I hate that in France but in Japan it's awesome, thanks to one major difference. Here, you get your own dedicated room so you just stay between friends and it feels almost like at home!

Here's the main device, it has tons of settings, even the pitch can be adjusted!

Here's my quick user guide:

1) Use the catalogs you see on the table to select a song. There's a huge choice! Notice the control box at the lower left, coming right from a Star Trek episode.

2) Use the remote control to input the song code and add it to the playlist.

3) Sing!

Steps 1 and 2 can also be replaced by: use the Star Trek box to search a song by genre, name, artist, popularity etc., and add it to the playlist. It's very convenient to use, thanks to the touch screen and stylus.

Thirsty? No problem, just help yourself, it's all you can drink!

For the "cheesy" atmosphere, there are maracas and tambourines to borrow at the reception desk. There's also a wifi access point, it always helps !

On the next picture, I'm singing 亜麻色の髪の乙女 (I'm on the right, but you should know that!...). Well, he could have taken the picture while I was actually singing!...

Since I know hardly anything to J-pop music, I picked a couple songs that were used in a fantastic video game called Ouendan that I'm very familiar with: 大切なもの, リンダリンダ (linda linda). There were also many other great songs, and classics such as さくらんぼ ou 大きな古時計!

And the best: it costed a mere 800 yen (about 6,5 dollars as of today!) for the whole afternoon and free drinks !!!