Karaoke kanji guide

If you should find yourself doing karaoke with a Japanese-only monitor, here are some handy kanji. (I apologise that this is a bit vague and incomplete. Truthfully, I can't read all the words myself - and on some monitors the actual words differ - but no matter what karaoke selector I use, I can recognise the key screens, and here is how. ^^;)

When you turn it on, you'll usually have to select an option to go to the song catalogue, and then you'll be presented with a few options.

歌手名 means 'singer'. Search by artist.
曲名 is the other main choice and means 'song'. Search by song title.
新曲 is another common option, it means 'new songs'.

Let's imagine you chose to search by song title. You'll be presented with a screen full of Japanese characters. If you want to sing a song with a Japanese title, all well and good.

The four buttons at the bottom are 'return', 'change to English characters', 'delete last character' and 'search'.

At the bottom of the screen will be a <=> button with the character for 'English' (英), which will take you to the English alphabet. You can change back by pressing the かな button.

When you are inputting your song title, usually you cannot enter spaces, so just type the title in as one word. If you make a mistake, look for the button at the bottom with '１字' in it, it will delete a character.

The search button is usually in the bottom right, will likely say 探す (さがす), or 'search'. Once you've pressed this, you'll get the search results. 次 (next) and 前 (previous) will take you forward or back a page.

If you change your mind at any point, usually in the bottom left corner is a button saying 戻る (もどる), 'return' or 'back'.

Once you've selected a song (the select button's usually in the bottom right of the screen), it'll show you the song and its first line, so you can confirm that's the song you wanted.

On this screen you can see the song info, including the song number (if you were entering the number from the song book, rather than typing in the song name). At the bottom, the button at the left is もどる (back) and on the right is the 'select' button.

You can also fiddle with the key, which I don't recommend, as you tend to waste half the song messing about with it. You'll know you've successfully input your song, as on the karaoke screen, the song you entered will briefly flash on the top of the screen.

Should you become disheartened while singing your piece, there'll be a button on the monitor, red in colour, including the kanji for stop (止), which cancels the current song.

Oh, one other tip, usually the first song will deafen you. You have to change the volume on the machine under the TV itself. Avoid the dials with sharps or flats # on them, they change the key. Volume is 音, there may also be labels for music and マイク (mic).

Some karaoke selectors may differ from this layout, but most of the ones I've tried have followed it. Oh yeah, and karaoke rooms also have books of songs, so you can also find the 'foreign songs' section and enter the relevant number of the tune you wanna sing.