If you’ve happened to check out the pics link on this page, then you will have noticed that I finally posted photos of my ‘do. It’s ten day old now. I got it just before we went to a Bloc Party concert in Tokyo. I’m not sure that I like it yet. Without a car my options for salons were fairly limited, so I went back to the same guy who’s been cutting my hair, the one I usually disaggree with. I really like him, but though he had trained at an american-stylists school, he tends to be very conservative with his ideas about hair color, and his ideas about cuts. I appreciated this at first, when I thought that he was just keeping me from doing something to drastic that might look awful. But then I realized that we might actually just be having a communication problem, mixed in with the ideas he was trained with of beauty. The first time I asked to have my hair coolor changed to one that was slightly brighter and darker he couldn’t believe it. He urged me to go with brighter and lighter instead. I wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy either, becuase he hadn’t realized the effect his heavy dyes would have on my hair. When I suggested this time that we go with a darker color, and add some black to it, he was a little bit more open to the idea, but he refused to dye my hair either black or black with a blue tint, and was unbelieving–in a joking sense, we both laughed at– that I’d ever had hair this color before. SO, we went with ‘violet’, which has turned into a deep dark red in my hair, and which I like, but definetly didn’t ask for. It is however what I had asked for a few months ago, when he put pink dye in my hair and it inevitably turned kind of copper.
As far hair cutting is concerned, the first time was a success, but I was bored. I soon asked for an A-line type style, but I had brought in no pictures, and I found that he wouldn’t do this, either because he favors cutting my hair into a bob, or because he wasn’t sure of what I was talking about, or both. Next I tried drawing something and even looked through tons of pictures of Japanese hair styles, only to end up with something I wasn’t so happy with. So when I knew I had to go back to him again, this time I started scouting for styles I liked, and pictures to bring in. And this time he cut my hair to the picture (He’s actually fairly talented, I think), except for my bangs, which he was very insistent about leaving at a certain length. I had to go back a second time with more pictures to assure him that I new what I was asking for, and that I wanted them shorter. He was still hesistant, but did it anyway, and then styled my hair. This is another issue I have but I often let it go, let him style my hair as he pleases, and then I promptly go home and change it. He insists now that I need to straighten my hair, and scrunch it on top. I hate this. He told me that I need to style my hair this way, so that by night it will still have volume. I guess learning about my hair and my face shape will be a slower lesson. So far though, I haven’t had any of the horror stories I heard about when I was being warned about going to stylists here, and it seems that as long as I am confident about what I want and can back up my attempts to communicate that with pictures, I get something very close to what I ask for — which is about the same as what I’ve experienced with stylists in California.
So anyway, I am happy with this haircut, although…
Maybe it could frame my face a little better, I’m not certain. I’m open to suggestions.
The Bloc Party concert was great. We saw the Noisettes at the same show. Funny thing though, we almost missed it. We didn’t, in fact we got there in good time, but we thought we were early. Thank goodness I was curious about seeing the Japanese bands that I thought were suppossed to open.
We had prepared a weekend in Tokyo thinking that by the time the concert ended it would be too late at night to catch a train home. We were wrong. The doors opened at five. This must have been when that japanese bands started. By six, the ’supporting’ band, the Noisettes, began they did a 30 minute set, almost exactly, and were off the stage, and by seven Bloc Party was on. They were having some sound issues with the bass track, which might be why it took half an hour to set-up. They played for an hour, set-up again, and then played for another 30 minutes. We were out of there at around a quarter to nine.
We could have easily gotten home, if we’d raced, but it was nice not to have to.
We had a good day that day. We took a ferry boat up the Sumida River. It felt like extravagance, but in fact it was very cheep. The weather was pleasant warm for winter that day, and I kept nodding off on the deck.
The whole weekend was just what I needed to get me trough to the upcoming recital. This nightmare has been what I have been teaching my kids for the past two and a half months, I’m glad that most of them are still excited about it. Some of them have been dreading it. I feel bad that most of these kids have to participate whether they want to or not, and teachers are forced to teach recital material, even if the kids won’t be making it to the recital. Anyway, it’s almost over. I am very tense about it. My contract is up two weeks after that recital. I know already that there are going to e some issues with some of my kids, one of them will most likely cause a stir. At this point though, I’m ready for anything. I offered to teach the yearly intensive business course, so I’ve got that edge. I don’t feel that I absolutly need this job anyway. It would just be nice to keep it. I’ve made friends here now, and I feel at home most days. Other days, I feel I could easily live in another country. We’ll see. Reed and I are both confident that even if one of my students declares that he hates English and that his dad is forcing him to perform, I’ll still be able to keep my job.
