MUSIC LIFE in JAPAN

As you know, KARAOKE is popular in Japan. After we enter the university and make new friends, we have a lot of parties to get to know each other. At that kind of party, we usually go to KARAOKE after having a couple of drinks and food. Strangely, although we can't talk much in a KARAOKE room with loud music, singing together bonds our friendship. Everyone has more than one favorite song which they can sing well and sing it everytime when they go to KARAOKE. It's called "18ban"(no.18). (use it like "I'm gonna sing my 18ban")

HitoKara (go to KAEAOKE alone) has been becoming more common especially since some famous people said they do HitoKara in their free time on TV shows. Even some young ladies do HitoKara. They are too busy to make time for friends in the rush of modern life, so they want to release their stress whenever they want or just for practice in singing for a KARAOKE party.


Hikaru Utada is a very popular artist in Japan. She is a singer, songwriter and she also writes lyrics. Her first album "First Love" sold 8 million copies. The song "First love" is still sung at Karaoke even though it was released 10 years ago. The music and the lyrics are too beautiful to be forgotten. She sang this song when she was only 16 years old. You may know her because she made her debut in the USA in 2004 as Utada. Her first single "Devil Inside" got 1st first prize in the dance chart Billboard.

A decade ago, in Japan, there are some original type of Japanese music. "J-POP", "Enka", Mood Pop", "Idol Pop", "Youthfulness Punk" and etc.. The most popular type, a symbol of Japanese music, is "Enka".This is the most famous singer of Enka, is Misora Hibari.She was the first woman in Japan to receive the People's Honour Award, and at the time of her death, she had recorded around 1,200 songs, and sold 68 million records. After her dead, her swan-song "Kawa no nagare no y ni" (川の流れのように) is often performed by numerous artists and orchestra's as a tribute to her.And, this is another guy, named Jero, born Jerome Charles White, Jr. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.He is a Japanese Enka singer who is American-born of African-American and Japanese descent. His maternal grandmother was Japanese. He is the first black enka singer in Japanese music history.And his first single, Umiyuki (海雪), was released in Japan on 2008. It entered the Oricon charts at number 4.

BY Sawako, Shizuka, Hayato