カラオケ

According to Google, that's Karaoke in Japanese. It could actually mean chin whisker but unless I have any Japanese-speaking readers, none of us will ever know. I would actually love to learn Japanese one day so I can grill the sushi chef about the urban legend that you can't eat sushi on a Monday OR when pregnant. What do they really think? What do Japanese people do? Shall we have a plum wine together? Konichiwah!
The other week, during my break from Onefinedaily, I helped to organise my best friend's hen. Everything went v well, apart from when I scraped the icing off 5 cupcakes and ate 2 giant gingerbreads, breaking my diet and burning my throat with the sugar shock. It wasn't about me me me though, it was about the bride-to-be and I think she had a great time. For the evening, we booked the smashing Rockaoke whose website is a quite bewildering mess of name-dropping in very very small font. You will be none the wiser from visiting it which is a shame because trust me, they are worth the money. They send a three or four piece band to your event, along with a singer/compere, and two microphones and stands with ipads. Then, it's basically just like normal karaoke. You choose your song from a huge list, tell the compere, who gets the lyrics up on the ipad, and then you just sing to the cheering crowd, with the band behind you. It is a liberating and super fun experience and not just for the exhibitionists. Even the wall flowers dropped their "no, I can't, I really can't"s and were up there doing their best Dolly Parton. If you are organising a party, I can't recommend them highly enough.