February 24, 2025
TOKYO – At a time when airports across Japan are opening eateries, shopping malls and other amusement facilities to occupy passengers’ time while they wait to board their planes, Saga Airport in Saga Prefecture has become the first in the country to install a karaoke booth.
The company that operates the airport expects that the booth will be used by not only passengers on domestic air routes but also inbound foreign tourists, who have been increasing in number since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
¥100 per song
The karaoke booth, called “Saganosora” (Saga sky), is shaped somewhat like a telephone booth. It was opened for a trial run on the airport’s first floor on Jan. 22 and has since been relocated to the third floor of the international terminal building.
It is 2.4 meters high and can accommodate up to four persons at once, although it is only equipped with two microphones. For ¥100 per song, travelers can don a pair of headphones and sing along to the music.
Kyushu-Saga International Airport Building Co., the Saga-based firm that runs the airport, introduced the karaoke booth to give passengers something fun to do as they wait to board their planes.
The booth was made by Daiichikosho Co., the Tokyo-based company which operates the Big Echo chain of karaoke parlors. The company that operates the airport gave the booth its name and installed it on the first floor near the central stairway so that it could easily be seen by both domestic and international travelers.
A digital clock is also installed in the booth so that passengers will not miss their departure times.
Ryuji Matsufuji, 61, a company employee from Yanagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, who enjoyed doing karaoke in the Saganosora booth on the day it opened, said with a smile, “When I visit Saga Airport to travel or something, I sometimes worry about how I will pass the time. I think this will give me an easy way to spend it well.”
A Daiichikosho official who supervised the installation of the karaoke booth said, “We have high expectations for the booth to be used by foreign tourists, as karaoke offers them a good way of using Japanese coins that they won’t be able to exchange when they go back to their countries.”
Resumption of international flights
Many of the people who use Saga Airport are from areas like Saga Prefecture and southern Fukuoka Prefecture.
In 2020 and 2021, the company that operates the airport tried to lure more users by means such as refurbishing its paid-entry lounge and expanding the area where specialty goods from the prefecture are sold.
But the number of stores in Saga Airport is lower than at Fukuoka Airport and other urban airports.
In response to a survey conducted by Kyushu-Saga International Airport Building in 2023, many passengers expressed opinions to the effect that they wanted more places to spend time.
Additionally, flights on three air routes which were suspended due to COVID-19 crisis, connecting Saga with Taipei, Shanghai and Seoul resumed services in 2023.
As of December 2024, the total number of passengers on those three international routes since the start of the fiscal year was above 92,000 and expected to continue rising.
In light of these conditions, officials of the company decided they wanted to add new facilities to entertain passengers at the airport. So they visited a leisure industry exhibition in Tokyo last autumn. It was there that they encountered a Daiichikosho karaoke booth and decided to bring one to Saga Airport.
Sho Akikawa, chief of the business planning section of Kyushu-Saga International Airport Building, said, “We feel there’s something surprising about seeing a karaoke booth inside an airport, and so we thought it would be a good way to offer a new kind of amusement. It can be used by people other than the passengers themselves, so we hope this will serve as an opportunity to promote Saga Airport as a visitor-friendly location.”