Karaoke Parlors and Japanese Pimps

Last night/early this morning was the very first time me and Soco have ever been to a Kareoke Parlor. A group of friends and us were pretty much the loudest ones there. We cranked up the volume to the max, drank beer and sang to our heart's content. It was really great! There was plenty of privacy in the little party room. The place served all kinds of drinks, ice cream and food. The service was top notch. And having the microphone in your hand makes you feel like a superstar no matter how crappy of a singer you might be.

I also learned what men in business suits, who look like CIA agents with their earbuds, are doing in the streets at midnight. They are like, what we call in the states, pimps. They will come up to any (single) guy and try to introduce him to a girl and tell you where she is, so you can hook up. She will usually be located at some hotel somewhere and the business man will give the guy a room number. After the engagement(sex), you are expected to pay the girl with a gift no less than 30000 yen (300 dollars) in which the man takes the girl to a nice store. That is why you see some school girls with expensive Gucci purses. Prostitution is illegal, however the men aren't paying the girls with cash. A loophole in the system. In the states, this would appear to be a sleezy thing to do, but here it is handled with professionalism. In Japan, sex is sex, the girls don't expect anything else.

Being stationed at the hospital and Soco being a laboratory technician, I know for a fact that the STD rate is high in heavily populated places such as this. And condoms don't protect from other STDs such as crabs, genital warts, and herpes. The consequences of STDs can be life changing and extremely painful.



Damn it, I can't seem to get that song, "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" out of my head. At the end of the night, my throat was sore from all the yelling and screaming of the lyrics of Smash Mouth "I'm a believer" (from Shrek), Shaggy's "Wasn't Me.", and Anchor's Aweigh (in which, I didn't pick that song, but some joke-ster wanted me to sing that one, so I did, with my best pirate voice).