Take a look at the photo I’m including with this story. I took that shot on an average afternoon, just because the building was so tiny and run down. It looked like a garden shed compared to all the modern cement buildings of Akita City. Two weeks later I was walking by again, but this time, it happened to be late on a Thursday night. Jazz night. Yep, on the first Thursday of every month, that tiny building is an after-hours jazz club. There’s just enough room for a row of 6 bar stools and a long thin bar (when my friend sat down on a stool he effectively blocked all exits from the building). The bar back is overflowing with tapes and CD’s of the greatest crooners and torch singers of the 30’s and 40’s. Blue smoke and Julie London’s voice fill up any remaining room.

The clientele that night included: a blue collar guy from the nearest construction site, Johnny Cash’s Japanese twin, a thoroughly sloshed housewife, and the owner/bartender himself; a Tokyo company man who spoke four languages and operated the jazz club in his free time, just for the love of it.

One of my favorite things about living in Japan is that every little back alley has something interesting going on. You can walk down the same street for months and then one day there will be a door open that was never open before. Suddenly you’ve discovered a sake factory, a seasonal sweet bean pastry vendor or the local Taiko drum club. Definitely, definitely go inside.

The first car I bought in Japan was a Honda Accord LX. It was nine years old and had about 50,000 kilometers on the odometer. It cost one hundred thousand yen (about $1,000). This was most expensive car I had ever owned. To put this in perspective one has to understand that the two cars I had owned previous were a 1976 Pontiac Astre and a 1978 Chevy truck.

The Astre was one of Detroit’s first responses to the oil crunch in the 70s and the best thing I can say is that it always started. It might stall or stop immediately, but it always started. It had over 200,000 miles on it, leaked oil and most of the body had been replaced by sheet metal held on by pop rivets when I finally sold it for $60 to a guy who had just got out of prison and needed the car to drive to his job at Burger King. He could not pay the $60 dollars all at once, but stopped three Fridays in a row with $20.

The truck had a straight eight-cylinder engine. The body was mostly rusted out, but once it got its speed up the truck could fly. It literally looked like it was flying going down the highway with its rusted quarter panels flapping in the wind like the wings of a bat out of hell, filling the rear view mirrors of cars before it sped past them at over 100 miles per hour.

When I checked the blue book value of the Honda online, I could not find one that had so few miles, but 5 – 10 thousand dollars seemed to be the average price for a Honda Accord LX in the US. Used cars are cheap in Japan. The reason I learned was because of something called SHA-KEN.

Quite simple really, SHA-KEN means a car inspection. Three years after they are purchased new, all cars must be inspected every two years to insure that they meet certain safety requirements. Drivers take their cars to service stations and mechanics check the brake pads, tire tread, windshield wipers, etc. The kicker is the price. If nothing is wrong with the car, the inspection for a 1500 cc engine is about one thousand dollars. Parts and labor to replace worn parts push the price up.

About three months after I bought the car, it was due for its SHA-KEN checkup. We drove the car down to the local service station waited while the mechanics checked the car out. For the education of the customers, the lobby of the garage was decorated with used car parts demonstrating how much tread was necessary on a tire and how much a break pad was needed to pass the inspection. I wandered around and checked these displays out.

After the inspection was complete, the mechanic invited us back to have a look at the car. The car was on a lift in the garage with its tires off so that we could see the pads and the struts. The idea had struck me that this was a government issued license to steal. The garage could fail a car just to sell unnecessary parts. Primed with the knowledge gleaned from the lobby displays, I was ready to resist any selling pressure.

First the mechanic showed me one of the tires. “This is your tire. When the tread gets too worn, it is very dangerous. You could have puncture.” I looked down at the tread. I slid a ten yen coin into the tire tread. In the US we had been told to use a penny and the tread should reach Abe’s head. The ten yen coin slid in what looked to me an approximately as far as Lincoln’s brow line.

“There is plenty of tread on this tire,” I said a little aggressively.
“Yes,” the mechanic agreed. “This tire is fine.”

Next, we looked at the brake pads. “This is the brake pad,” the mechanic explained. “If the pad is too worn, it is very dangerous. The car might not stop and you could have an accident.”
I had just studied the brake pads in the lobby. “This brake pad is fine. There is plenty of pad left.” Again I was aggressive.

The mechanic agreed immediately, “Yes, this brake pad is fine.”

The conversation was not going the way I had imagined. The mechanic would point out the dangers of worn parts. I would point out that there was no problem and he would immediately cave and agree with me. It was not exactly the hard sell that I had been anticipating.

I began to get nervous. Maybe I was missing something. My knowledge of car maintenance is pretty spotty and except for what I had gleaned from the crash course in the lobby, I had no knowledge of what was safe or not.

There was another lift with a car being inspected in the garage. The car looked pretty new, probably its first time and the mechanic was showing the owner a young woman around the car. I eavesdropped on their conversation. “This is the brake pad,” the woman’s mechanic explained saying exactly the same thing I had heard moments before. “If the pad is too worn, it is very dangerous. The car might not stop and you could have an accident.”

“Is this pad OK?” the woman asked.
“It would be better if it were new,” the mechanic replied.
“Should I change it?” she it asked.
“It would be safer if it were new,” the mechanic repeated.
“Please change it,” the woman said.
“I understand,” said the mechanic.

Everything was clear to me now. The customer had to ask for the unnecessary parts. Brilliant.

In the end, the expiration date on my highway flare had expired and I needed new windshield wipers. I paid one hundred and ten thousand yen and was bowed out of the service center’s parking lot.

That was my first experience with SHA-KEN over ten years ago now. I consider it a testament to how far I have come in Japan that when the mechanic says, “There is nothing wrong with your car. Please pay one hundred thousand yen to the cashier” it does not even strike me as odd anymore.

I wonder what I would have had to pay to bring the Astre or that old Chevy truck up to code.

Question: What’s harder to find in Japan than a 6-foot, curly haired person?
Answer: Someone in Japan who can cut the hair of a 6-foot, curly haired person.

After months of letting the ‘fro grow, I got tired of having enough hair that it could reach the tip of my nose. I’d been wanting a trim for a while now, but finding someone who can cut curly hair and speaks some English took quite an effort. One or two places had been recommended to me, but for one reason or another, they fell through.

So a Japanese friend of mine volunteered to help. My friend had talked to the woman who cuts her hair who had some experience with some curly hair before. Her haircutter (stylist? barber? I have no idea the right term. hooray for being a guy.) needed to see what she was getting herself into, so pictures of my hair were taken by a cell phone and e-mailed.
A couple days later, the OK was given. (Of course, I had to wonder what took a couple days to respond to the email. What sort of high-tech analysis needed to be done?)

So finally, an appointment was set up. Now, I was originally told that the haircutter spoke English. But that turned out to be a little bit of an exaggeration. And while I was never expecting fluency, the haircutter spoke a grand total of 5 words of English, and none of them had anything to do with cutting hair. “Short” and “long” weren’t even in her vocabulary.
Fortunately, though, my friend came with me, and worked as translator. I haven’t had a third party at a haircut since I was eight. All sorts of flashbacks of car-shaped barber chairs were coming to me.

On our way to the salon, my friend confessed to me that the haircutter was nervous. I said, “Well, now, so am I.”

We get to the salon, and the haircutter greets us, and hands me a form to enter my name and appointment time. All earlier appointments from the day had been filled in, of course in Japanese. Nothing to remarkable about that, except the form itself was in English. Not one soul working there speaks any English at all, but the form was entirely in English. When asked about this, the answer was, “Wow, I never noticed that before. I don’t know why.”
Now the nervous woman who will be putting scissors near my head then starts fondling my hair and babbling on in Japanese. My friend responds, and she starts rubbing my hair too. So here I am, a grown man sitting in a salon, having two women poking, prodding, moving, pushing around and discussing my hair. For those of you saying, “Dave, you’re so lucky to have women fondle you like that!” I reply that it was not that enjoyable for yours truly. And far from sexual, you perverts.

We make it over to the chair and I sit down. After a minute or two, I realize this woman is working very hard to reach the top of my head, even though I am seated. I look down and see her standing on her toes, and so I slouch down like a teenager watching television. (more flashbacks) This draws laughter and looks from other people in the salon.

Eventually my nerves calm as I see the haircutter seems comfortable with the task in front of her. She settles in, as do I, and she does a pretty good job.

When all is said and done, I pay and get ready to leave. Not so fast. At this point all the other employees have gathered around the “man with the crazy hair.” Everyone is staring and remarking how tough it must have been for the woman to cut the crazy curls on my head. Some of them even find it funny that the hair which is now on the floor has curled too. I’m not quite sure why they are so amazed that my hair is still curly after it’s been removed from my head. Do they think my head has some magic curly energy that twists anything that touches it, and so once something leaves my head, it automatically straightens out?

So now the pointing and joking starts to subside, they have formed a semi-circle around me. I’m a celebrity. Then the camera comes out. The woman who cut my hair was so … something (honored? proud? relieved??) that she wanted a picture taken. I was half expecting to sign autographs before I left.

I did have an even longer-than-usual thank you and good-bye exchange, as I had to say that to each of the gawkers standing in the horseshoe.

Yes, it was quite an adventure to get my hair cut. Fortunately, I have a while to go before doing that again.