Solo karaoke X ohitorisama life...

Recently, I learned of the "Ohitorisama" culture. It refers to people living and doing things alone. (hitori means one person. sama is an honorific title "Mr./Ms." o is an honorific prefix.

To some people, I know doing things alone seems depressing or unbearable. Not to me. For as long as I can remember, I've been okay doing things on my own. When I did my internship in university, I had lunch on my own because I was the only intern in my department and my bosses had their own schedules. I've never had any issues watching movies on my own or dining alone. True that I'm clingy to my friends, but yeah I don't mind being on my own when no one's around.

And it seems I've found the perfect place to live the "ohitorisama" life. Haha!

I've yet to find the same kind of friends I have in Manila and in Singapore. For some reason, most of the people I meet here turn out to be one-way kind of friendships. I was the one always inviting the other party to do something.

I learned my lesson the painful way. Lol. Example, there was this one person I hung out with. One time, I lamented how I have no real friends in Tokyo. The person said, "Hey! I'm your friend." Gullible person that I am, I believed him. But whenever I invited this person to hang out, there was always some kind of excuse. Eventually, I just got tired dealing with the BS and stopped making an effort. There were a few other similar encounters.

Oh well, I'm sure they have their reasons and it's perfectly fine. Thankfully, there are still a few who I think I can consider as real friends.

But recently, I had this realization than I'm done with such kinds of toxic relationships.

So, enter the decision to adopt the "Ohitorisama" life, at least for now.

Haha! That was such a long introduction, what I really wanted to say was that I found this awesome karaoke place for solo people! It's a chain and there's one that's really, really close to my house.

Since today's a holiday, I decided to check it out.

It was goooooood!!! Hmm, the selection of English songs were updated. The downside is you should probably know how to read hiragana/katakana, at least. That's because you'll have to register as a member. Also, if you want to sing Japanese songs, there's no romaji option so hiragana/katakana knowledge would be useful. Chinese and Korean songs are also available.

Because it's Golden Week, the place was almost deserted. I imagine it gets busy on regular days. It was a good decision to check it out tonight.

The facilities were really good. They have a drink all you can station.

One of the really good things as well, and this is going to sounds really "ohitorisama", is that you can sing as crazy as you want, you can sing whatever song you want, you don't have to wait for your turn to sing. While it is true that karaoke with friends is probably more fun, there are times when you just want to sing your heart out. Haha!

The name of the place is 1Kara. They've got a few branches in Tokyo. Will definitely be back soon....