It had always been our writer’s dream to cut an album, but there was just one problem…

Recently, our reporter Mr. Sato has been working a lot outside of the office and has found a surprisingly wonderful workspace in his local karaoke parlors. They offer loads of personal space, cheap food, and the chance to blow off some steam with a hearty rendition of “It’s Raining Men.”

And every time he visits, Mr. Sato seems to find something new. For example, in previous visits to the Club Dam chain of karaoke rooms, Mr. Sato had overlooked a large laminated sheet advertising the option to record your own karaoke performance onto a CD…just like the pros!

▼ “SING IT! CHOOSE IT! CD IT!”

Mr. Sato: “…”

The feature was called Instant Karaoke CD Plus 2 and first required Mr. Sato to go to the reception counter and purchase a blank CD for 600 yen (US$5.44). On the way down from the 7th floor our reporter contemplated whatever happened to Instant Karaoke CD Plus 1.

With his CD in hand, Mr. Sato was all set to lay down his cover of the jingle from the Takemoto Piano commercials.

Mr. Sato: “Piano utte chodaiiiii♫”

However, when the “CD Recording” button is activated, the song selection becomes more limited and Takemoto Piano sadly did not make this cut. So, instead he went with the song “Casablanca Dandy,” originally by the legendary Kenji Sawada.

▼ The first thing Mr. Sato had to do was turn on “CD Recording” (CD録音) on his remote console.

The song selection process and cuing was pretty much identical to the normal way of using the karaoke machine. However, prior to starting he had to accept the terms of service because he was making a CD.

Also, when the song started there was an icon in the corner of the screen to show him that recording was in progress.

After that, Mr. Sato just had to do what he does best and sing!

Unfortunately, due to copyright concerns, we can’t actually transmit the audio of his singing. However, Mr. Sato assures us that aside from a few stylistic differences he sounded “almost totally exactly like Sawada in his prime.”

When the song was finished, Mr. Sato panicked for a moment, realizing that he hadn’t put the CD into the machine yet. Luckily, that’s how the service is meant to be used and he selected the big green “contents” icon on his touch pad remote.

From there he selected Instant Karaoke CD Plus 2 (即席カラオケCDプレス2) from the list of features.

Then Mr. Sato tapped the “Choose from Recorded Songs” (録音した楽曲から選ぶ) button.

Normally, the service allows three songs to be recorded on a single CD, but Mr. Sato felt that he couldn’t improve on perfection and just used the one song.

He then put his CD into the DAM burner below.

After about a minute of whirring and spinning, his freshly printed debut CD was complete.

Sure it was just karaoke music, but Mr. Sato had always wanted to be a recording artist and in a way this fulfilled that dream.

But just then reality hit him like a ton of bricks…

Mr. Sato: “How am I supposed to listen to this?”

He realized that he hadn’t had a device that played CDs in years, rendering his newly released single completely useless.

In hindsight, a USB stick recording service would have been far more practical, especially since he could buy 100 blank CDs for the same price up the street. But at least our own Mr. Casablanca Dandy Sato can say he did it.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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