Home sweet home?

I am soon to be moving to Yamagata, Japan. Home of:

-ski fields
-hot springs
-apartments
-pot plants
-cherrry blossoms
-seasides
-snow monsters
-extreme weather
-limited English
- the movie Departures
-whiskey consumption
-personal karaoke machines 
-pagodas
-human chess

I can't begin imagining what this is going to be like. All I know is that is quite possibly the polar opposite of my current home. The information I have come across is fragmented and mysterious providing only a vague notion of what I am about to encounter. Strange snippets of knowledge are precious gems e.g. 'Yamagata has the highest national height for second year high school girls measuring in at 1.56cm'. Adventure awaits, and, for the first time in my life I am going to feel tall. 

My way: death by karaoke

I love nights of debauchery and ending up at my favourite seedy karaoke bar. The cask wine, the mish mash of drunken and slurry participants, the dazzling array of songs and the assumption that for one night only, I can be as enigmatic as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, or perhaps Snoop Dogg.

Note to self: do not sing Frank Sinatra's 'My way' if karaoking in the Philippines. Apparently, this is a death wish. It has become such a problem that authorities now have a sub category of crime called 'the my way killings'. Why? Apparently the song is just too cocky and provocative and everyone has an idea about how it should be sung.

'Defenders of “My Way” say it is a victim of its own popularity. Because it is sung more often than most songs, the thinking goes, karaoke-related violence is more likely to occur while people are singing it. The real reasons behind the violence are breaches of karaoke etiquette, like hogging the microphone, laughing at someone’s singing or choosing a song that has already been sung.' As a result many karaoke bars have removed it from their playlists.

Read the full NY Times article on the bizarre phenomenon here.