The Great Adventure

The Great Adventure - Preamble

7/29/08

Ok, I admit it. I’m underperforming from day 1. I showed up to my pre-departure orientation on Friday in casual garb while everyone else was in formal, and further, due to a silicone based hair-care product, um, incident… I don’t have extremely formal shoes. To top it off? I just got back from skipping an entire morning’s worth of lectures on team teaching. To my credit, however, I’ve had the time of my life and I already took a team teaching class in Atlanta.

The Great Adventure: Jacob Gets a Haircut in Tokyo –

Since I’m confessing, while it may not be the most glamorous thing I’ve ever admitted to, I’m an avid watcher of the travel and cooking channels. One the many pieces of advice I’ve heard and chosen to forget, the one thing I heard that really stuck with me was that getting a haircut in a foreign country is a great way to embrace the local culture and get you away from the touristy beaten path. For some reason having latched on to that one thing in the countless wasted hours of watching other people travel, I have been hard-set on getting a haircut in Tokyo. Tokyo’s a big city, with lots of people, many of whom have hair that needs to be removed periodically. This should be a piece of keki (cake), right?

Well, yesterday I asked the Japanese version of a concierge where he would recommend I get a haircut. I’m certain he understood what I was saying… at least he nodded like he did. I made pretend scissors with my fingers, mock-clipped at my hair and in my best Japanese I said I wanted to get my hair cut. Do you have a most honored recommendation? (as a quick aside, you can look forward to these blogs occasionally translating what asking a simple question in Japanese might sound like in English) He informed me that the salon in the hotel was a bridal salon and did not accept men. Oh, ok… but wait, tomorrow between the hours of 10:00 and 6:30 the building across the street has a barber that can take care of me. Wonderful! It’s a plan…

Today came and after my roommate woke me up at 4:30 this morning with his other drunk friend I decided to get a jump on my day, get breakfast, figure out how to make an international call, and iron my shirts in the hospitality suite. I actually came back to bed around 7:15 after breakfast because I started to feel drowsy again, and fell asleep until 8:50, just in time to run downstairs and catch the opening lecture at 9. After an amazing lecture from the director of Japanese Education, and four incredibly boring lectures from his peons, I cemented my decision that skipping lectures in place of irreplaceable time in Tokyo was totally worth it. Besides, how long could it take to run across the street and get a haircut?

Arriving at the carefully marked building on my map, I quickly realized I was going to need help navigating the all Japanese directory in front (speaking and reading Japanese are two entirely different things). Furthermore… this place didn’t look that commercial. In fact, it felt like an office building. Oh well, I’ll hop in the local camera store for help. I asked a pretty young lady standing in the Cannon kamera-ya (camera store) if she could tell me what floor the place where I would obtain a haircut was? (I didn’t know how to say barber shop).

After showing me their new model of an electronic dictionary which translated barber shop into ba-ba- she informed me there was no such place here. In my best broken Japanese I tried to tell her that the man at my hotel must have been mistaken when he gave me this map, and where could I get a haircut a place that would accept men. She looked slightly confused and called two of her other female employees and they held a pow-wow in the middle of the store while they frantically searched the internet, looked in phone books, and called ahead for the best place for me to go. WOW! Talk about service. They seemed so confused while they did this. (I’m a master at interpreting body language :P) They were probably confused because apparently what I actually said to them was not I need place that cuts men’s hair, but rather I need a place where men cut hair.

We all finally figured out what we were saying to each other when I got a pen and wrote out what I wanted. I remember my teacher told me that the Japanese frequently can read/write English, but just can’t pronounce it or understand it when spoken. YAY! Through the combined efforts of nearly an entire staff of a local Camera store in Tokyo, they found a place where I could get my hair cut, cut out the advertisement from the catalogue, called ahead for me, and marked on my map where to go. I’ve officially decided that the Japanese are the sweetest people on the face of the planet.

My journey to the salon wasn’t uneventful, however. I followed my map diligently to the west side of Shinkjuku (the area where we are staying here at the hotel). It was definitely not close and Japanese summers are very hot and humid, similar to Georgia. I made it across the railroad tracks safely (on a pedestrian path!) and turned a corner to a site I was not expecting to see. West Shinjuku is huge!! It’s like Time’s Square in New York, just everywhere and it goes on and on. It was very overwhelming, but what a cool surprise. And to think I wouldn’t have seen it if I had chickened out and not gone on my adventure. Anyway, I found the department store marked on my map, but there was nothing obvious about how to get to the salon. The little advertisement that the kamera-in (camera store employees) cut out for me had street names that I could not find and certainly couldn’t read. The first person I asked seemed really confused, and not surprisingly sent me in what turned out to be totally the wrong direction. I stopped in a Men’s clothing store and asked someone else. He confirmed I needed to go back the same way, but he was not familiar with the store. Basically, I just had to go back and ask someone else.

At this point, my wool suit was really starting to make me sweat, and I decided to walk into the department store. This was my first experience in a Japanese department store, and they are much bigger than we are accustomed to here in The States. Japanese department stores have many levels and sell a variety of products, kind of like a self contained, multi-storied strip mall. They frequently have beer gardens (complete with greenery) on the top floor where you can relax and drink beer in the evening during the hot summers. Finally, I found someone who was familiar with salon I was looking for and she spoke in very simple, slow, and easy to understand Japanese. From this moment on, if you are reading this and would like to continue to be my friend, you have to be nice to foreign tourists and speak in simple, retardedly slow English so you don’t get bad karma because it’s so hard and very scary. I understood her to mean that I had to go to the next building which was the men’s version of the department store, and it was actually behind the building away from the main road. When I got there, she said it would be above the honorable flower shop near there. I managed to find the signs pointing to the men’s store (fortunately they were written phonetically, pronounced men-n-zu). Inside the men’s store, there was in information desk and I asked the clerk if she knew of the shop. Yes, and apparently I was very close. She didn’t say anything about an honorable flower shop, but I followed her directions down the alley to the nearby building.

I walked in a door, intending to ask directions again when it dawned on me that I was surrounded by orchids and a perfumed scent in the air. I could have spent days in this store. The Japanese take their flowers and flower arranging seriously. I politely made my way through the small room to the escalator and followed it to the second floor. They were brushing wigs and looking funny at the gaijin, so I kept going. On the third floor I finally found it! Yatta! (I did it) I walked up to the counter, triumphantly introduced myself, and just as they were greeting me, I completely lost my focus. This salon was busy dressing people in traditional Japanese hair and kimono. WOW! Talk about a cultural immersion. I excused myself momentarily and went outside where there was a Mom, Grandma, and the cutest little girl in her red kimono posing for pictures. I asked grandma if I could also take pictures and she was just as sweet as she could be, saying of course. The girl was (to her credit I’m much taller than her father, have reddish hair, and round eyes) was very shy and didn’t want to pose. I kneeled down and in my nicest Japanese I told her how cute she looked in her kimono and she smiled brightly and blushed and indulged my desire to take pictures. I thanked Mom and Grandma and went back in to claim my prized haircut.

Inside, the attendants at the front desk had just watched the ordeal taking place outside with much amusement but they asked my name, what I wanted, and asked me to wait for a few moments. They came back with my stylist and she brought me to the back and sat me down in front of a plain vanity with a bench and asked me to describe the haircut I wanted. I know how to say, “shorter please” and I smiled hoping she would take it from there. She wasn’t happy with that, and when I reassured her she was the expert, she produced a catalogue with pictures, but said she was worried that they were pictures of Japanese people. I couldn’t tell the difference between how the hair might be cut, pointed to a picture, and she nodded and requested the presence of the man who would wash my hair. I got more than a wash, however, I got a full scalp massage. It was very relaxing feeling this Japanese man take a good 10 minutes or more to massage my scalp, neck, and temples. Oh, quick aside… he covered my face with a napkin. It was so weird having a piece of cloth draped over my face and watching the blurred outline of a stranger touch me. When he was done, I asked him about the napkin and he explained that it was to keep water out of my eyes while he washed. Makes sense. I was actually washed twice, once before and once after my haircut.

Miyagi, my stylist, cut my hair and we talked, referenced my dictionary, and she laughed when I explained what a “cow-lick” was and what it literally meant. She told me that in Japanese they are hair tsunamis :) After my washes and cut and massage I went outside to pay and Miyagi-san let me take a picture with her. She firmly instructed me that tipping is not traditional, so I reluctantly paid just the $50 even required for the service (cheap for Tokyo and what I got) and left.

If this experience wasn’t already fantastic, I passed a Starbucks on my way to the hotel. The iced grande mochas are just as good as they are in Seattle. Could life honestly get any better?!

Going into the windup, and the Pict-ures!