YamaSho

You know when you wake from that dream where you're in a dungeon that looks like Times Square belting out the lyrics to "Faith" with octopus ball soup pouring down your face while an impeccably coiffed Japanese boy band laughs at you? You weren't dreaming, dude, you were at YamaSho.

From a Japanese restaurateur who really likes to sing, YamaSho's an otherworldly, 350-seat izakaya-cum-karaoke Mecca, with soaring 50ft ceilings, exposed brick walls, a cozy sushi bar, a massive mezzanine section with a private dining room, and, more importantly, an accessed-by-elevator basement that houses ten variously sized/themed karaoke rooms, done up to look like Tokyo, SF, Osaka, NY, Hokkaido, Fresno, etc. OK...not Fresno, but how funny would that be? The grub available upstairs is fairly extensive, ranging from assorted sashimi, to inside out eel/tempura shrimp/salmon rolls, to fried shrimp/chicken/veggie katsu on skewers, to steamed red snapper "cooked in special soup", or as you like to call it, "something I'm now probably not going to order". A limited snack menu's offered downstairs in playland (stuff like fried chicken wings, eel/avocado "Rock n' Rolls", Yakisoba noodles, etc), and lubrication includes 30 sakes, shochu cocktails, and bottles of Asahi/Kirin/Sapporo -- they'll bring it all to you 'til 2am, at which point it's time to ask your waiter to do that to me one more time, I can never get enough, of a man like youuu...

Adorning the walls are paintings by the owner's wife that're actually pretty good: upstairs it's classy Japanese ladies with fans and kimonos, while downstairs it's street scenes/landscapes in the themed rooms and a smiling portrait of her favorite Japanese pop band who're still laughing at you, but only because you refuse to put your faith in songs from anybody but Nickelback.