FamilyMart + Karaoke: Singing at the Convenience Store?

While walking around Kamata, I came across this slightly unusual convenience store: A FamilyMart combined with karaoke. Best of both worlds?

Karaoke is as ubiquitous as convenience stores in Japan, although there are places that lack both. Kamata is the last stop of the Keihin-Tohoku Line before Kawasaki. It’s also a stop on the Tokyu Ikegami Line. For shopping, there is the Granduo Kamata and the Tokyu Plaza, plus two shopping streets.

FamilyMart + Karaoke DAM

From the outside, it looks like two different businesses: FamilyMart on the left, karaoke on the right. You enter through the convenience store and will see two desks: one for the store, the other one for the karaoke.

You can shop and the convenience store side, pay and then mention that you want to use their karaoke room. They’ll then ask for how long and you’ll be assigned a room. You can take your convenience store goods with you.

This is important, because there is no room service. The whole combined area is just operated by one person. There is however a self-service desk, serving cold and warm drinks. These are included in the room rent, so no need to buy soft drinks at the convenience store side.

Noise!

Taking the mic at my assigned room, I was immediately assaulted by the worst reverb and feedback loop I’ve ever heard. I’m not sure if the previous users left it like that or if that place even allows to reset it back to standard settings remotely.

Ultimately, I had to dial back each setting by a lot: volume, echo etc. At fifty percent it started to make sense. It made me wonder for what kind of room the max setting is designed for – certainly not my room, which was suitable for groups up to eight people!

The DAM system

The karaoke system used is manufactured by DAM. DAM is one of the two dominant providers of karaoke songs in Japan, the other one being Joysound. A big tablet allows you to search the vast library of songs, change the pitch and adjust the settings of the machine.

Other than the machine and two microphones, there is no other equipment in the room. The doors are also not particularly soundproof. At least I could her the sound from another room. But maybe they were singing at extreme levels.

Challenges of Hitokara

If you want to make the best of your time singing solo (hitokara), it makes sense to prepare a list of songs to sing. That way, you won’t waste too much precious time on searching for the next song.

As with any karaoke system in Japan, the selection of songs in languages other than Japanese may be hit or miss. This is the only area where western karaoke provider Karafun might have an edge, even though Karafun’s library is much more limited.

While the latest songs from the Eurovision Song Contest might not be in DAM’s library, all the karaoke classics are. I was mostly interested in the Japanese songs anyways.

Seeing that DAM has almost every Japanese song I could think of, brought a smile to my face: Morning Musume classics, newer songs by frederic – a band I’ve seen live in Nagoya – plenty of anime songs and some less mainstream songs. My taste in Japanese music isn’t that exotic though, so I usually find what I’m looking for.

Timer

I set my alarm to ten minutes before the scheduled end of the session, giving me enough time to collect everything and leave the room. The final song was by Queen: Somebody to Love in the Nipponglish version.

Nipponglish is a feature of the karaoke system Live DAM Ai and Luve DAM Stadium and only available for selected songs. It’s supposed to give a guidance system to sing English-language songs like a native speaker.

The most obvious change is that the karaoke cursor is now on the katakana instead of the alphabet. Looking closer, you’ll see that the size of the katakana is further varied, giving more help, provided you know the system.

DAM links to the Nipponglish Online Academy. Nipponglish in turn links to the Nipponglish YouTube channel with various sample songs.

Conclusion

Essentially, this FamilyMart + Karaoke collab is just a way to save money on staff and the karaoke experience at other places is better. So I wouldn’t recommend going all the way to Kamata just to sing here.

This is apparently not the only location where FamilyMart and Club DAM cooperate. There is another club in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture that also allows to take in meals and offers all-you-can-drink.

Track list:
Kitadani Hiroshi – We Are!
FLOW – Cha-La Head-Cha-La
Mini Moni – Strawberry Pie
The Oral Cigarettes – Black Memory
Zone – Secret Base
KEYTALK – Monster Dance!
Babymetal – Karate
dream – この夏が終わる前に
Inshow-ha – BEAM!
Every Little Thing – One
Morning Musume – As For One Day
Morning Musume – さよならSEE YOU AGAINアディオスBYE BYE チャッチャ！
Sora Tob Sakana – New Stranger
Frederic – Only Wonder
Aimyon – Marigold
Yona Yona Weekenders – 終電で帰ります
Queen – Somebody to Love (Nipponglish)