Karaoke’s wicked popular in Japan (c’mon, like you didn’t know). It’s fun to show friends in America the YouTube videos of songs we’d sing every other week in Kyoto. Ken Hirai’s “Pop Star” ended up being that one song we’d sing every time we had the odd urge to spend $8 for thirty minutes in a box with two microphones.
Ken Hirai, Pop Star
Another popular karaoke band amongst us gaijin (外人) was a group called Monkey Majik. The band is, awesomely enough, also composed of two gaijin, who were assistant language teachers in the JET programme years back. Eventually, they formed the band, teamed up with some Japanese back-up musicians, and produced a number of songs that became fairly popular.
Monkey Majik, ただ、ありがとう