One of my students offered to take me to the hair salon she goes to. I'd already asked a Japanese tutor how to say certain things in Japanese, like "cut, please," and "reduce here" (since my hair is so thick), but I wasn't all that confident that a few phrases would be enough. So I figured it'd be a good idea to take one of my little translators with me. For some reason the students like to go places with me, even to the grocery store, so I knew I wasn't putting her out. So she made me an appointment and then invited two other girls from the dorm to go along.
This is supposed to be the before shot, but you can't see much. I brought in a photo of Emma Watson's pixie cut, so I wouldn't have to explain very much what I wanted. Originally I was going to go with a Mia Farrow picture, and I had told Uto-chan (the leader of this group; they call her by her family name because there are three Ayanos in the dorm, one of whom was with us) about how you can go to a salon in the States and order a Mia Farrow, and they'll know what you mean. So while she was showing the stylist the Emma Watson's picture on her cell phone (keitai), she was also trying to remember Mia Farrow's name. And she was asking me, who is that ooman, M. F.? Maa, Fiiii... And I had to tell her that Japanese stylists wouldn't know the Mia Farrow, hahaha.
The funniest thing about getting a haircut in Japan wasn't the haircut itself, more the reaction the girls had to my hair getting cut. For most of the cut, they stayed underfoot, watching and being shocked at various things, as I'm learning Japanese girls tend to do. First they stood by and watched my hair get shampooed and my scalp massaged, and took a couple pictures of that, the little paper face-cover they put on you while this is happening on my face. Then they watched him snip away for a while and kept picking up little pieces of my hair and marveling at how fine they were. Then when he shaved my neck they were awed at how fine and fluffy that hair was, and actually pointed out that it was dark grey, which I hadn't realized. Chi-chi (Chisato), was like why is it grey? and I had to explain that I'm getting older, and told them all that I've got white hairs scattered around my head, too, which the stylist confirmed.
Then once the stylist started doing the detail snipping and little piles of my hair formed on my shoulders, the girls were shocked at how fluffy and light it was. All the while, I'm actually having to teach them these vocabulary words. They don't know how to say hair is fluffy or fine or thick, or for Japanese hair, coarse. Anyway, there was basically no end to their sense of wonder over my hair.
Here are the after pictures. My hair looks fine, and the stylist didn't do anything stupid like all those Korean stylists.
