Sunday, January 25, 2009

Momo2 and the 노래방 (Song Room)

So, we just moved to Columbus and we just got our furniture and personal items out of storage, which included my bowling ball.

Sean's been nagging me to go bowling, and he apparently wants to try to get more than gutter balls now, so we decided we'd go bowling. At first, we were going to go to Momo2's, which is pretty close to where we live, but we decided we'd go to a "real" bowling alley across town, the Columbus Square Bowling Palace, that's open 24 hours and has 64 lanes of bowling fun. Unfortunately, they were bowling leagues on all 64 lanes when we got there and we were told that it'd be an hour before we could do open bowling. Ugh.

We decided to leave the bowling palace and just drive around for a little while to see what was in the area. From the looks of it, most of Cleveland Ave. is kind of crummy, especially after dark. We moseyed our way toward home and weren't ready to retire for the night, so we ended up at Momo2's after all.

Momo2 is located at 2885 Olentangy River Rd, next to Kroger. They've got four lanes of bowling, a cafe with free wi-fi, pool tables, food, and 노래방. They call it Karaoke to please the people that don't know better, but it is DEFINITELY 노래방.

Noraebang is translated to English from Korean as "Song Room," and it's a place that has various sizes of private rooms that you rent by the hour and the rooms basically include a karaoke machine and a couch
. I think this is basically the only way karaoke should be marketed. You lock yourself in a little room and sing and dance to your heart's content with yourself or your friends, and the only people that will make fun of you are your friends who already make fun of you for other things. (Some 노래방 might not be suitable for those that are claustrophobic though.) You get a songbook that has songs in English, Korean, Chinese and a few other Asian languages. You punch in a song and sing away to the lyrics on the television.

The lyrics aren't the only things shown on the television while your song is playing. You get to see a video too! Some videos are related to the song, but most of them are just ridiculous! Imagine watching a video of someone sailing out in the ocean while you're singing along with the lyrics to Madonna's "Material Girl." Some of the Korean songs at least show videos of the singers performing.


If you ever get a chance, definitely check out Noraebang. I think I saw another 노래방 somewhere around Clintonville, so I'll definitely have to check that out.

Here's my new "signature" noraebang song. We'll go bowling some other time.