That famous Christmas song, sung by someone in their late 40s... [ChocoZAP & Karaoke Diary 2025/12/04]
To maintain my motivation for ChocoZAP, I keep a record of my strength training and karaoke (JOYSOUND National Scoring Grand Prix. 1000 points for the top 10).
Today's exercise record
Ab bench 100 reps
Thoughts & Diary
As expected, things have gotten busy at the end of the year, and this was finally my first strength training session of the month. I've managed to keep my weight steady, but this is not good.
I want to do the full course at least twice a week, though.
JOYSOUND National Scoring GP
922.761 points (- points)
Ranked 1,797th out of 6,527 nationwide
It's finally December. I won't be able to come as often as last month, so I plan to enjoy myself at my own pace this month (probably).
For now, I've decided not to use the veteran songs like 'Miagete Goran Yoru no Hoshi wo' for the time being, and instead focus on strengthening the newer songs I started singing last month.
Yutaka Ozaki's 'OH MY LITTLE GIRL' and 'Shelly', and GLAY's 'Haru wo Aisuru Hito' got off to a great start, immediately producing scores close to my personal best.
Even though the national #1 ranking at this time of year is completely unreliable, this is something to look forward to.
Taking on Christmas songs
And since it's December, I decided to try my hand at Christmas songs and winter songs as well. I'm trying them out at random.
However, in reality, most of these are my first attempts...
Among these, the one that is incredibly difficult is the familiar Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'. It's probably the most difficult song I've ever encountered.
Naturally, I'm singing it an octave lower, but the intricate pitch changes and the gospel-like rhythm make it an extremely difficult song. It's in English, too, lol.
Listening to it and singing it are two completely different things. An average of 83 points...?
On the other hand, Tatsuro Yamashita's 'Christmas Eve' ranked relatively high on my first try.
Wait, could I actually pull this off?
So, to learn the pitch I only vaguely remembered, I checked the pitch bar in the scoring analysis and tried again. I jumped straight to 15th place.
Wait, could it actually be happening?
I changed the song I was planning to sing and tried again. And then...
Suddenly, I made it into the national Top 10! 9th place.
Well, would you look at that, I slipped into 9th place even though it's the beginning of the month. I'm the most surprised of all. 'Christmas Eve' is actually a difficult song with subtle pitch adjustments. I never expected to score in the 93-point range.
When I was young, I never thought I'd be belting out this classic song in my late 40s lol
Besides that, GLAY's 'HOWEVER' and 'Winter, again' also made it into the single digits, so I have high hopes for those as well.
Since it's a new month, I've decided to work on songs by Yutaka Ozaki, GLAY, and Tatsuro Yamashita.
47.239 points to go until the goal of 970 points
Last month's national 1st place
I took 1st place nationally in 6 songs in November. BEGIN's 'Miagete Goran Yoru no Hoshi wo' and Kenji Ozawa's 'Icho Namiki no Serenade' were especially satisfying because I achieved them while there were a fair number of participants.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Details on the JOYSOUND National Scoring Grand Prix are below