How to sing Japanese karaoke without being able to read Japanese
How to sing karaoke with romaji
I thought I’d write this post as I noticed this not too long ago when doing karaoke in Japan and several friends who like Japanese songs but can’t read Japanese were really interested, so I thought I’d share about it for anyone else who might be interested.
This post will explain how you can select romaji for Japanese songs on the Joysound system for karaoke.
Karaoke Systems
In Japan, there are two main karaoke systems (Joysound and DAM), and when you go to a karaoke place, especially where you rent a private room, you often have a choice of systems. I personally have been a Joysound girl for a number of years, because I’ve used their at home service on Nintendo Wii in the past and recently on Nintendo Switch. I’m just used to their interface and audio, so I tend to almost always ask for Joysound as a consequence. I am a creature of habit.
I’m going to talk about the Joysound system because that’s the system that I discovered has this interesting functionality of switching on romaji for their entire catalogue of Japanese songs.
I also want to mention, however, that I have heard from friends that there is a small selection of romaji songs available on the DAM system too. So if you use DAM you may find there is a selection of songs listed under a specific heading ‘romaji songs’. I have heard it is a small selection however, and does not include the entire Japanese song catalogue on the DAM system. My apologies for not having personally investigated this so I can’t say much more than this right now. For the rest of this post, I’ll be talking about Joysound and how to select romaji for songs.
What is romaji?
I assume most people who may stumble across this will know what romaji is, so if you do, please feel free to skip this section.
In case you don’t know, romaji is basically Japanese language written in Latin characters (btw, we use Latin characters in English) instead of in Japanese scripts, such as hiragana, katakana, and kanji. This means you can effectively read something in Japanese without actually knowing how to read Japanese.
How to turn on romaji
As mentioned, this works on all songs in the Joysound catalogue in the system (as far as I can see).
When you select a song, clip on the options. I usually adjust the key and maybe I choose a game or some other options. This is what the screen looks like below:
If you scroll down in the settings (設定) section
you'll see this option called ruby display (ルビ表示)
It has two options: Romaji (ローマ字) and Kana (かな)
Kana is autoselected by default, select romaji before confirming the song choice with the 予約 button.
Okay, so what is ruby?
Again, feel free to skip this section if you're a karaoke veteran or not interested in the mechanism!
When you sing a song in Japanese at karaoke, the words will often appear on screen, and some kanji will have ruby or furigana which are hiragana and katakana readings written above them so that the singer can know how to read the kanji or foreign word (in the case of katakana). Sometimes the furigana is because that kanji may be considered one that a native speaker my struggle with, or it may be what's called gikun (義訓), where the lyricist or author has used poetic license and decided to have a different than usual reading for that kanji (for example, maybe they decided they'd like 夢 (dream) which is usually read as 'yume' to be read as 'kibou' (hope), so the ruby will let you know this reading so you can sing the correct pronunciation.)
To be clear, this is a feature used by native speakers of Japanese, it's not implemented for learners, although, of course it can be helpful for learners.
karaoke with kana ruby display
On that note, sometimes not all kanji will get the ruby or furigana treatment. Songs for children will have more furigana above kanji than songs for grown-ups, so having the furigana switched on (well... I can't see a way to switch it off) won't help you if you really can't read kanji as you can't rely on it *always* being there. (Although all the example shots I had on my phone every kanji had furigana ... but I know I've seen it... so just saying.)
When you switch this ruby setting to romaji however, it does seem to be designed for non-native speakers of Japanese and instead of just giving romaji for (some) kanji it gives romaji for EVERYTHING.
Well... except for foreign English words. It assumes you can read these!
So perfect for someone who can't read any Japanese.
Please note that I've used the terms ruby and furigana almost interchangeably here... however it may be better to point out that ruby refers to any character that can appear above or beside some text to give the reading, such as hiragana, katakana, or romaji, while furigana is basically the same but really limited to hiragana and katakana. It's a slight distinction and I don't wish to cause confusion to anyone. That's why the display setting is ruby and not furigana because it includes any characters which include romaji characters.
Are there any downsides?
I have to admit I haven't actually sung any songs with the romaji turned on personally. I switched it on once to just see how it worked and snapped a few shots, but I can spot a few minor issues that I'll mention so you can be aware of them.
Spacing is a bit erratic
As you can see from the examples above and below, the romaji is placed directly above the Japanese, so it's not the same as reading romaji prepared by a human or maybe by a more intelligent conversion system. The spacing may not match what you're familiar with if you're used to reading romaji.
Particles may not be romanised correctly
In the example above the particle は has been been romanised as 'ha' instead of 'wa'. From context, a speaker will be able to know when は should be 'wa' and not 'ha', but perhaps the conversion system Joysound use can't handle this.
I suspect this may also happen with the particle へ 'e' appearing as 'he' as the conversion system can't tell when it should be read as 'e' and when it should be read as 'he'.
Overall, if you can't read Japanese though, these are a small price to pay. That Joysound use some sort of conversion programme I think is a given, seeing as it is an option for all songs, it's unlikely and probably not financially viable to have someone key in romaji for ALL their songs.
What about Joysound at home?
Sadly, this is not available on the at home Nintendo Switch version (as far as I’ve seen… but I admit… I haven’t played on the Switch in quite a long time… and it’s not something I am personally looking for usually. I just happened to notice it when adjusting the settings as for some songs I always change the key.) So, again, I’m referring to the karaoke systems you do in person at a professional karaoke place running a Joysound system.
Hopefully this is helpful and if anything has changed, or isn't clear, feel free to send me a message! Happy karaoke-ing!