Submitted by: D. Eyerman – Shiga, Japan
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.