An Unexpected Invitation

I was having a pretty slow day at work when another teacher struck up a conversation. We started chatting, and they brought up the topic of karaoke. Before I knew it, they had invited me out to karaoke on Friday night. I was floored. 

Now, this isn’t quite the first workplace invitation I’ve gotten, but it was the first one planned in advance. I had another teacher at my visit school treat me to dinner after work, but that was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment plan. 

I didn’t know this coworker very well, but I really didn’t know any of my coworkers all that well, and I figured this was as good of an opportunity as I was going to get. When I went home that day, I was pretty thrilled. We had exchanged line accounts as well, and this is the first time I had a coworkers contact info, that I didn’t work with directly anyways. 

Shortly after ironing out the details for our upcoming karaoke Friday, they extended another invitation. There was an upcoming holiday, and apparently there was a cosplay meetup event happening in Ikebukuro (Tokyo) at the Sunshine City mall. 

I was slightly hesitant, as that would almost certainly be a long day with someone I didn’t know very well, but I felt like it was quite the kind offer on their part. Apparently, they even had an extra cosplay costume they were willing to lend me, so not only would it be a fun event to simply attend, I would get to participate as well. 

After a bit of internal debate, I accepted their invitation, and would pay them back for the tickets at karaoke on Friday. I spent the rest of the week excited for karaoke on Friday, which came at the perfect time to offset my sadness at wrapping up my time at my visit school. After work on Friday, I stopped somewhere for dinner, and headed home. 

We had planned to meet at 7, I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be late, so I picked a slightly later time to make sure I would be on time. When I got home, I got a text saying that they had already arrived at the karaoke place. I didn’t want to keep them waiting, so I got ready, let them know I could come earlier, and headed over. 

The karaoke place was about 30 minutes away, in a larger city where I often went to take the train into Tokyo. There was probably the most traffic I’d experienced here in Japan, and the 30 minute trip took closer to 45 minutes by the time I got there. I was still technically early, but I felt bad keeping them waiting. 

I could feel myself getting nervous the closer I got, and by the time I parked my nerves were in full gear. I was worried about making conversation, my Japanese is still pretty rough, and I rarely practice. They were able to speak some English, but I felt bad placing the burden on them to speak my language, so I wanted to at least make an effort. 

When I entered the lobby, we said a quick hello, and went to the reception to grab a room. I wasn’t sure how long they booked the room for, but I wasn’t really paying attention, or I missed it while trying to translate the Japanese. We dropped our stuff off in the room, then went out to the drink bar. 

Now, I had to do the slightly embarrassing thing of asking the other teacher for their name. Outside of the other English teachers, I hardly know the names of anyone that I work with. I wasn’t sure if their name on line was their actual name or just a display name, and it would only get more awkward to ask the longer I waited. 

As they told me, I tried to repeat it to myself as much as possible. It didn’t take long for it to exit my brain though, and I would have to ask them again after the hangout over text. I still have a hard time remembering Japanese names, especially verbally. Seeing them written out (in English) always helps them stick better in my brain. 

After that, it wasn’t long before we both launched into karaoke. I started with some ABBA, I figured it was a good universal pick. They picked an English song as well, so I figured I should do my best to sing a little in Japanese. The karaoke machine was different than the one I usually used, and was a little less accommodating to English speakers, but I managed alright. 

I went with one I knew pretty well, Zankoku na Tenshi no Tēze or Cruel Angel’s Thesis, a famous anime opening from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I’d been working on this one for a while, so I felt fairly confident, and when I finished I got some praise from the other teacher. 

We went on for a while, taking turns singing for about 30 minutes, when to my surprise, another teacher joined us. I had assumed it was just going to be the two of us, but I was certainly happy to have other people join us, the more the merrier afterall. Around 30 minutes after that, another teacher joined us, though they didn’t end up singing. 

The other two teachers were quite good singers, though I rarely knew which songs they picked. I tried to make some conversation between songs, but we mostly just took turns singing various songs from different anime or pop culture. I was probably the worst singer out of the 3, reflected in the scoring from the karaoke machine, but I really didn’t mind. 

Karaoke is usually at its most fun when you don’t worry about how you sound, but just enjoy the act of singing with friends. I tried to pick songs that they might know, picking things from my rather limited repertoire of Japanese songs. I was quite grateful I had decided to start going to karaoke by myself every week, almost like I had been training for this exact scenario. 

After around 3 or 4 hours since we first started, our time came to a close, and it was time to wrap things up. I paid back the other teacher for our future event tickets, reassured that it would be a fun day, and said goodbye to everyone. I felt like it had broken the ice a bit, and hopefully I would try to strike up conversations at work a bit more. 

Honestly, this is the kind of invitation I’d been secretly hoping for basically since I arrived. It helped me get out of my comfort zone, and engage with my co-workers to the best of my limited Japanese ability. I’ll always be endlessly grateful for getting this surprise invitation, and I even had another event to look forward to!