Internal Bleeding

I really think I might have done permanent damage to my internal organ(s). My insides may never be the same again - I may be irreversibly altered.

Before you begin to worry, I must assure you that I did not wake up in any bathtub full of ice with a note in my hand and a hole in my side where one of my kidneys used to be. As far as I know, both of my kidneys are still intact and fully operational.

I am, of course, referring to the much more common (in my complete guesstimation) and likely in Japan breakdown of my throat and vocal chords. The medical term for this condition is laryngal karaokeitis. Yes, my friends, I broke my karaoke organ. The real damage was done the night before I left to go home for Christmas, but the problems began 5 days before...

It was a fateful Sunday night, the day the music died. A friend and I had spent a long and productive day Christmas shopping at Asakusa shrine - this after yet another GasPanicky all-nighter on the Friday. So, needless to say, I was already feeling tired. My throat did begin to feel kind of sore toward the end of our shopping expedition, but I attributed that to simple fatigue. After a mediocre tempura dinner, we decided that the best dessert would be a round of karaoke. We swore to ourselves that we would only do an hour; after all, it was already near 9pm. So, we did some comparison shopping and tried unsuccessfully to haggle a good price with one of the street hawkers, but finally ended up at the Mercedes Benz (C-class, not E-class) of karaoke joints, where you pay for the looks but also get great performance. As there were only two of us and I had, by this time, explained the virtues of speed karaoke* to my friend, we were each able to do A LOT of singing, especially since I'm the quickest draw in the Far East for thinking up songs. The best part of this night was our discovery of Extreme Speed karaoke, where you sing every song literally as fast as the machine will allow you to set it - in Big Echo's case (a.k.a. the Mercedes Benz of karaoke joints), that's a 7 and we have yet to find a place that goes faster than Big Echo. We even figured out a "debut" song for when we're introducing Extreme Speed karaoke to people for the first time and an "encore" song that is really the piece de resistance of our set. These two titles will remain secret so as not to spoil the experience for any of my forthcoming visitors.

In the end, we just had to extend our time and ended up doing an hour-and-a-half. We probably would have done more, but luckily there were train times to consider. Anyway, by the next day it became clear that my sore throat was not due to fatigue but rather to the fact that I had come down with a cold. Which, of course, was greatly helped by my 90 minutes of Extreme Speed karaoke the night before.

Usually, my colds take ridiculously long to fizzle out, but I was careful to get plenty of sleep and fluids and vitamins that week and by Friday I was feeling a lot better, even if I was still a little congested. Of course, Friday night being the night before I and my fellow Extreme Speed singer left on holiday, we had to get the Usual Suspects together for a farewell dinner and karaoke. We hadn't had a chance to debut our secret new discovery and this was just the night for it. Ultimately, although we were four for dinner, only one of our friends continued on to karaoke with us to witness the newest thing in karaoke. Of course, as "luck" would have it, our friend doesn't really like to sing and refuses to sing alone, so it was again basically a two-man show. We not only showed off Extreme Speed karaoke (it wasn't as fast as we didn't hit Big Echo, but it was still good enough), but the place we went to had my song from "Sister Act 2" - the only place I'd seen it thus far. Plus, I had to get in my Mariah and JLo and Lara Fabian, of course, so lots of power ballads going out that night. Then, my non-singing friend idolizes, of course, none other than Mme Celine Dion - so I accompanied on that.

By the end of the night, I sounded even worse than Peter Brady at the height of puberty.



I could hardly speak as no sound would come out and when I did speak or swallow or breathe - basically everything, right?!? - it felt like sandpaper being quickly run up and down my vocal chords. Fun! When I got home, I promptly brewed some green tea and downed about 3 small cups before bed. During the night, the pain only got worse. I never slept for more than 30 minutes at a stretch as I kept waking up from the excruciating pain that was in my throat. What had been sand paper before, had turned into an animal with giant claws trying to paw its way out via my throat. I was finally able to suffienctly numb my throat in a coordinated offensive strategy of throat lozenge and hot green tea at the same time. I slept for 3 hours straight after that. I completely identified with the little girl who was sure it would hurt if she swallowed. Get your minds out of the gutter and into the circa 1990 Chloraseptic Spray commercial... Geez, you dirty pervs!

No surprise, my cold took a turn for the worse and I ended up being in some stage of cold and/or cold recovery for nearly my entire trip home. The fact that I've fallen in diva (that's karaoke speak for "I wish I were delusional enough to try out for American Idol just so that I could pretend that I'm Beyoncé or Mariah Carey in front of tens of millions of people who will scream at the television things like, "What the hell is wrong with this girl?! She must be delusional!!") with the "Dreamgirls" soundtrack and have been singing along with it non-stop since my roundtrip 13-hour long road trip to Arizona over the holidays, probably isn't helping.



I'm back in Tokyo now and we all went for karaoke Friday night. My laryngal karokeitis definitely started to flare up again but luckily there were six of us, so the singing was more evenly balanced. We Extreme Speed singers did do our two songs, but my voice got a lot more break time with the other singers there. However, I am definitely worried that with this condition I may never be able to truly and fully delude myself enough to audition for American Idol.

However, "Japan Idol," now that's another story...


*Speed Karaoke: When doing only a short segment of time of karaoke, one must practice speed karaoke wherein one sings only a portion of selected songs so as to fit in as many songs as possible and thereby optimize and efficiently utilize the allotted karaoke time. This is not necessary, though may be implemented, for those sessions lasting longer than an hour. This is my preferred method of karaoke.