Sushi, Asahi, and Karaoke

Not having seen Xinh or Natey for a while, we made arrangements to hang out with them this past Saturday night. Natey had been talking about a sushi restaurant he frequents where he doesn't so much order sushi as tell the Sushi Chef "surprise me," and Liz was keen to try it out.

After settling in at the sushi bar and placing a couple of orders (I ordered Jalapeno rolls: Jalapeno, Crab meat, avocado, cream cheese - fried then drizzled with Eel Sauce) for some reason the waitress wanted us to move to the end of the sushi bar, so we obliged her, picked up our chopsticks and wasabe and relocated.

The Sushi Chef asked us what we'd like. "Surprise us!" I shouted, over the karaoke machine and the girl doing quite a good job on a Celine Dion song. "No octopus!" shouted Liz.

"What did you order?" asked Natey.

"We said 'Surprise us'," I said.

"That can get expensive," said Natey.

It actually wasn't too bad, but as Natey eats there a lot he is pretty sure the Chef comp'd us a couple of dishes. It probably also helped that this Gaijin was enthusiastically eating everything he put in front of us. There's nothing like a very happy & appreciative customer to make you pleased with your career choice.

Did I mention the karaoke machine? When we entered, the girl doing a very good (albeit somewhat nasal) job of singing Celine Dion was actually a young, teenage girl eating there with her parents. After she sang a few songs Dad got up to sing, and it was immediately apparent that she didn't get her voice from Dad. When Mom got up to sing my suspicions were confirmed. Mom could sing, Dad could not. I applauded them both, anyway. Even the truly dreadful singers need to be applauded for doing Karaoke, if for nothing more than having the balls to actually get up and sing in front of a bunch of strangers.

I'd asked the waitress if they had a song list I could peruse. They didn't. If I wanted to sing, I had to get up on the stage. The guy running the karaoke machine was pretty good himself, at both singing and playing guitar, although we did notice he seemed to be singing the wrong words every now and then. I discovered (when it was my turn) that it was because he had an Asian karaoke machine, and the lyrics had been entered by someone for which English is not their first language. Lucky I know many Beatles' songs by heart, because there were one or two words that weren't quite correct. I belted out a trio of Beatles' songs then plopped back into my seat at the sushi bar.

But the fun didn't end there. The food kept coming, the conversation flowed like Asahi, and every now & then I'd jump back up on stage to sing another song or two. As well as the first family another woman and another guy also took their turn singing. We were there for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, and we had a great time...perhaps I had an even better time than Liz, Xinh, & Natey, or maybe they enjoyed my singing as much as I did :D

As we'd never been to Natey's house before, we popped in before heading home and got the midnight tour. The previous owners had obviously done a bit of renovation, converting one of the bedrooms into a massive closet/storage area accessible off Natey's bedroom (the master bedroom). With a little bit of work he could actually convert it into a secret room and nobody would know it was there...except that I've gone and blabbed about it :P

Xinh took video footage of my karaoke efforts, and she promised to email them to me. She said she'd prefer I put them up on Youtube, that way I can't get mad at her for doing it :P I'm guessing she had a busy day today, because I haven't seen the videos nor has she updated her blog, yet ;)