Growing up in North America there is this weird dichotomy about singing. North America has one of biggest music industries in the world yet at the same time singing in public … normal people singing either at parties, in the bar or at sporting events is frowned upon. At least it was for my generation (Late Gen Xer) maybe now with all the hype around American Idol
Yet in Europe and the UK, North America’s parent country, singing in the bar or sports chant at a soccer game is the norm. Each team has their own chants, songs that fans know off by heart and will sing at the drop of a hat … like this little diddy from Manchester United for their star Korean player, Park Ji Sung
“He shoots… He scores… He eats lab-radors… Park Ji Sung, Park Ji Sung.”
That’s real song by the way, Manchester loves that guy. You can even buy the chants to listen on your ipad
This singing and merriment from across the Ocean directly contrasts to what North Americans do while seated in their Arenas watching their sport of choice. Don’t get me wrong there is music but they’re songs played over the PA. There is a clear line in North America we like music but it has to sung by other professional singers, not us lowly commoners.
Yet I’ve seen the electricity that the songs inspire at soccer games and even felt it when doing Karaoke in Japan. It’s a rush to sing and a rush to sing with a bunch of people especially when said people are all singing their hearts out together. I never felt that before I came to Japan. I feel like North Americans have missed out by following this whole taboo against singing in public thing.
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Gaijinass 
Good article…my question? Why are the girls mimicking giving head in your banner there? Are you trying to tell us chanting will get you blowjobs? That’s fairly sweet. Fairly sweet indeed.
That’s how Japanese girls sing in Karaoke bars! You’ve spent too long up the river.
“Are you trying to tell us chanting will get you blowjobs? That’s fairly sweet. Fairly sweet indeed.”
Replace “fairly” with “very” and I’m with it. Give me the mic!! 😉
OH god no, oh hell no, by all-that-is this post brings back horrible memories. I woke up for who knows what reason and on my way back to the basement cot I decided to check the net. My stomache hurts my head hurts and now my eyes hurt.
It is an amazing post. I just hate singing. I love watching Karoke in Chinatown Chicago while munching on gyoza and such, but only so long as I go unoticed.
The bible thumper comment really hits the nail and drives it right into my sore spots. I need a white russian and stat. I am so sober it hurts, thats not good with these church flashbacks.
Most people never believe me when I say I am a christian. It is probably due to my warped version of christianity, where Jesus is all hey how bout a hug and God is all that one must suffer he is proof I shouldn’t have allowed free will. So much of it can be connected to singing, and the fact that anyone can **** and produce a child (mistake of free will that I am).
Enough bable out of me time for an example to rein-in this crazy horse. Okay it is sunday and the sunday school portion of the day is over, now all the children are dragged kicking and screaming away from their crayons to sit for another hour, or two of sermon with the adults. Oh god time for a song. The rich people (that means everyone other than my family) pay for their kids to get singing lessons so they are confident and in key just like every single person in that church, every single last person but me. I try to hide myself in the perfect flowing gospel of the church by lip sinking. No dice I get elbowed. I persist hoping that only one has noticed… oh why cruel lord why, people, not one, but people as in multiple begining to stop singing. One by one they are turning and scowling at me. Before too many notice and the singing stops I decide to try. At first its faint like a whisper. Not enough elbowed again. I get very nervous as I know whats coming. I sing and I really try with all I have got. I should take a second to explain this isn’t some southern church where singing is over fifty percent of the sermon, just Iowa baptists and basic hymns (not even a fourth of the sunday church torture). Well a few words into it the singing stops on one side of the church. I am surounded by adults trying to kill with looks. They are saying, with only slightly less volume than the side of the church still singing, “What is wrong with that child?” “is he mocking us?” “no one who believes sings like that?” “If he had faith he would sing better.” “you should repent and give thanks to the lord boy.” “he is going to hell.” “horrible little brat.” I stop singing, now everyone else in the church is singing again, and occaisionally shooting me dirty looks. I don’t have to sing the rest of this sunday, but next week it will happen again.
Maybe this is why I haven’t gone to a church, except for funerals and during that one phase in high school when I wanted to see if I had imagined it all (nope they were really evil soul crushing places), since I was little. Maybe this is why I begin to get sick everytime I set foot in a church, actually sick (one person called me posessed during great grama Copple’s funeral). Maybe this is why I get sick and want only to hurt people everytime I hear gospel music.
Still I love hearing other people sing. I especially love it when a woman just breaks into song while working or cleaning or whatever. Asians singing Karaoke just puts me in a happy place. I do hope that whatever Japanese woman, that suffers brain damage and decides to spend time with me, likes singing and Karaoke and just somehow instinctively knows never to ask me to sing.
I have not brought up singing with my favorite pen pal. Perhaps I should if things start going somewhere. I hear Karaoke is very popular over in Japan. Singing is an amazing freeing beautiful thing, for everyone but me. I am just damned.
Don’t know why my mother chose a church full of rich people with expensive clothes. Don’t know why she beat religion into me with the wire end of a fly-swatter across every part of my body whenever I pissed her off, all while saying weird religous crap and adding “Oh why lord, why did you curse me with such a child!” These things are realities in my life though. Now I am off to bed. I am not going to get any sleep, just stare at the ceiling and remember church, thats all that I am going to be doing till my composition class at 6pm.
Oh yeah loved the Korean stuff. My half-Korean friend Nick can sing some awesome death metal (not too much into death metal myself though). He tells me his mom (she is full blooded Korean) sings beautiful when she sings in her native tongue (I was friends with her for a few years before I started hanging out with her son).
She was adopted while very young and doesn’t really remember how to speak her native tongue. She just remembers the songs they taught the children at the orphanige. She says they made them sing these cute songs for people who came to look at children, because if you were cute and sang you might get adopted. She gets embarassed when I ask her to sing though, an thus I have never had the pleasure of hearing her sing.