karaoke with j-pop in rommaji ?

[brucelee]

any one come across any karaoke bars which has rommaji j-pop avaliable?

[kamome]

any one come across any karaoke bars which has rommaji j-pop avaliable?

Looks like somebody doesn't have their F*ed Gaijin credentials yet.

[American Oyaji]

hiragana and katakana took me 3 days to learn.

I'm still working on kanji.

But that will be a lifelong thing

[cstaylor]

hiragana and katakana took me 3 days to learn

3 DAYS!?! You sir are a certified genius. It took me a week just to make my 'a' and 'o' in hiragana look different.

[kamome]

It took me about 10 days to memorize katakana and hiragana. Kanji is a whole other story, but I'm a lot better now than I was back in college.

[American Oyaji]

well, 3 days to learn how to READ it.

I still can't write it so well.

I can't write in English either.

I never have been able to write, my hand will NOT make the same shape time after time. My signature is different everytime I sign it.

Thats why I love hanko.

I do all my Japanese writing on computer.

[gomichild]

Still learning to read katakana and hiragana and then singing it as it races across a screen are two different things... (beginners should not chose to sing Glay's "Yuwaku" BTW ... or any Dragon Ash)

Here's a sneaky way - buy or rent the songs you want to sing and photocopy the lyrics. Ask a buddy who's able to read Japanese to write it out for you in romaji. Then bring your cheat sheets with you when you go. Or to really amaze people memorize the lyrics.

[kamome]

I have spent many hours trying to memorize the lyrics from one of the Dragon Ash songs just to make an impression at karaoke. I still can't get it right. Rapping in Japanese is not for the mealy-mouthed.

[cstaylor]

...Rapping in Japanese is not for the mealy-mouthed.

::imagining Kamome rapping in Japanese::

[GomiGirl]

...Rapping in Japanese is not for the mealy-mouthed.

::imagining Kamome rapping in Japanese::

Another mental image of Kamome today - this is all getting too much for a poor white girl to cope with...

[American Oyaji]

Rapping is hard enough...
let alone in Japanese.

[stuckinkysuhu]

I started by memorizing the lyrics to a few Glay songs like Yuuwaku when i was dumped into a Japanese high school here and spoke no Japanese. It really does work! Of course the bigger payoff is just constant exposure to kana and kanji which will make you read faster and faster. Note that most karaoke machines are VERY forgiving with furigana (the little kana overtop of kanji to show the reading) even adding it for a lot of kanji taught in elementary school. The reward for this is that foreigners with limited kanji knowledge can still learn to read from karaoke machines given enough practice. Good luck! And if you ever find romaji j-pop karaoke, Japan really has changed !!

[gomichild]

and when you can't remember the kanji and there's no furigana - just say "kanji" and look cute... (well it's worked for me)

[kamome]

...Rapping in Japanese is not for the mealy-mouthed.

::imagining Kamome rapping in Japanese::

Another mental image of Kamome today - this is all getting too much for a poor white girl to cope with...

Hey, I can rap with the best of them at karaoke. Give me Will Smith anytime, baby!

[bluepxl]

well, i personally think that it is harder to read japanese using romaji. i tend to want to pronounce things english style when i read them that way, and it is also harder to read quickly if you ask me. i like reading japanese the way it was meant. so, i don't think karaoke in romaji would be any easier than in japanese-- you would still be struggling to do all the beats and pronunciation properly! haha.. but in any event, it would probably be a pretty hard thing to do. especially with a lot of kanji...

[stuckinkysuhu]

now that i think about it i agree... I hate being confronted with romaji. For example a friend gave me the lyrics to a song in romaji and asked me to translate it for her. Maybe people who can only read romaji don't understand - but Japanese people don't write their language that way for a reason. It is tough on the eyes and while japanese is strictly phonetic, when anyone reads roman letters they start thinking of vowel combinations and stuff like that. Once you start learning the japanese writing system you wont look back. God save Japan if they ever abandoned kana/kanji.