On the Sunday morning of the Show, I took the Koi Nations team off down to Hiroshima on the Shinkansen, and then picked up a rentacar, and headed out on the long trek to Shimane, to see Shiraishi-san. After a brief coffee, we went out for dinner at my favourite restaurant. Shiraishi-san, was quite rightly in high spirits after his All Japan triumph!
The interior of this restaurant is simply stunning! It used to be a temple for monks and has a fantatic dining area.
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After the restaurant, we headed back close to the hotel, and went to Muikaichi's only pub-bar. This is a tin bar owned and run by an extremely old couple, and is only ever frequented by locals, which always makes for an interesting evening. It is the norm in this bar to sing Karaoke. However, the Karaoke screen is usually set in a quite unorthodox way, as at the end of your song, you are scored by the computer for your efforts. The scoring is done in such a way that a series of squares on the screen covers the image of a nude model. The higher the score, the more squares are removed.
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And here we have Chris's score! I have to say, that hers is probably the lowest score I have seen, but I have never seen any less than two squares remaining, whoever sings. It is my guess that the computer won't let anyone score higher than this, for reasons of indecency. It seems to make people try harder at the singing though! ;-)
Shiraishi-san returned a good score, with only three squares left on screen! 94%.
Michael very reluctantly sang at the end of the eve... and in all honesty was oustanding! Almost thought he was singing to me! ;-) He scored an extremely good 93%, with four boxes left.