Haircut in Tokyo

Good hairdressors are hard to come by. It has been quite a while I walk out of any salon feeling remotely satisfied with my haircut.

Or maybe it's a Cancerian's thing.

Anyway.

I have been thinking about chopping off my hair for a while. (inspired by xteener's recent haircut) Moreover, Tokyo's dry weather made my already straw-looking hair worse. I actually felt embarassed going meetings this week. How pro can you look with hair sticking to your face due to static half the time? What's more, I am reminded of my disheveled self daily by the immaculately made up Japanese gals. Jap gals have gorgeous hair. Period. Even the school girls look straight out from the beauty box website. My hair esteem hit rock bottom.

So this morning, charged with new determination to rid my split ends, I bravely crashed one of the SHIN Hair salon (they have many stores along Harajuku to Shibuya area).

After showing the hair stylist a photo from beautybox, some monosyllabic dialogue made up of "cut", "no perm", "volume" and charades attempts, I said a silent prayer before proceeding to have my hair cut.

My verdict? Double thumbs up.

I was the only customer during the entire haircut. I am not sure if it is because they are all men (3 guys, one cashier, one hairdressor and one shampoo boy), language barrier or their professionalism, but there was no yakking throughout the haircut. If you deem peace as important as me, try to choose hair salons that are not on the main street (this salon was on the 2nd floor of a rather desserted street near to famous Takeshita street at Harajuku and go before noon time.

I have natural straight flat hair. I have never done a straightening perm before but I get asked that ALL the time. As of any straight hair gal, I envy girls born with wavy, curly volumnious hair. I have done a number of perms with varying disasterous results. All in the hope in getting soft curls liked this:

Photo from beauty box

And the SHIN stylist got this for me:

 

Yeah I know it does not look exactly liked the beautybox photo BUT... this is the only hair stylist that managed to curl my hair ends and make them stay curled (the photo is taken after 6 hours of nonstop shopping) with no perm or hair products. That takes skill I tell you. I lost count of how many hair stylists who tried futilely to style/blow my rebond-liked hair. Yes, that includes the expensive ones from Shunji.

This costs me ¥5,250 (about S$85). I am not sure if it is a director cut cos there is only one stylist.

I heard from my Jap colleague that the industry is really competitive and discounts/packages are plenty. She gave me a Coupon book which is really a directory of beauty/hair salons and restuarants. Present it when you walk in and you can get a hair and perm as little as ¥12,000 (about S$200).

 

My dad adores Japan and he said to me once, that you can randomly throw a stone and whichever restaurants it lands on, the food would be of excellent quality.

Looks liked this theory works for the hair salons as well. :)

Delicious Tokyo

"Hamburger" breakfast at Jonathan's

I am hungry all the time this week. Perhaps it is the cold weather. After every seam bursting meal, I will tell myself that this is it. I can't take a single bite of Jap food ever again. 3 hours later, I will be complaining to my colleagues that I am famished.

With the amount of carbs (sushi, check; ramen, check; soup rice after yakitori; check) I am walloping down, I won't be surprised if I can't fit into my CNY clothes. Sigh.. what 减肥年?? :P

Cold Cold Tokyo...



Dinner at Yakitori Bar





So freaking cold in Tokyo.. Brrr....

Have been hiding in my hotel room after dinner every night.. told myself I will be more adventurous tonight. Will see. Hibernating seems liked a cozier idea. >.<

●

Back to my random dot post.

Were sorting out the Bintan photos from the compact camera (yeah, DSLR did not make it for the trip) and found this photo. Random shot when we went over to my cousin's place for the tea ceremony last month. Love mum's new top.

Had a lovely time in Clubmed Bintan. It beats the Cherating one hands down.

We probably don't look like we were very excited but we were!

Will definitely do a post on clubmed but will have to wait till after biz trip.

Run: 3.5km
Did not track the time taken to complete; it only makes me feel worse (>.<)

Total since 12 Jan 2011: 6.5km

减肥年

Yesterday, I participated enthusiastically in my company annual health screening albeit warnings from seasoned colleagues that it is more of a sales tactic than a comprehensive screening.

The “complimentary” healthscreen consisted of BMI calculation, fat measurement and a basic urine test. I was most interested in the fat measurement. I did one of these tests shortly after graduation and were completely bewildered that I crossed the stipulated healthy range then.

I mean, you don’t expect that kind of result when you are told to eat more cos you are too thin all your life. Oh wait, come to think of that, those comments did die off after graduation. Hmm…

Anyway, some ten years later, things apparently did not change.

I am now officially, clinically proven, confirm-chop-stamped that I am indeed F-A-T.

That whole 30% of my body is F-A-T.

That the double/triple belly rolls I love to squish and pinch out of boredom when doing ahem big business is absolutely completely utterly F-A-T.
 
Charged with new determination, I ran 3 km yesterday night. I wonder how long can that last.

Post wedding, I have ran/gym an average of once a month. And that is already an achievement to me.

Yong and his friends have jokingly crowned the year of 2011 as the 减肥年 as they rubbed their growing bellies affectionately.

Guess it is so for me too.

 I thought about how this blog can help in this renewed motivation. And I have decided to do it ala my cousin's blog  --- by announcing my gym/running achievement at the end of my future blog posts.

So here goes nothing..

Run: 3km @ 45 min

Total since 12 Jan 11: 3km

Oh man, I run really slow.. *shame*

Anniversary lunch at Wild Rock @ Mount Emily

Our do-you-want-to-be-my-steady anniversary falls on 1st Jan. And boy, we had a FABULOUS time at Wild Rocket @ Mount Emily.

Every single course was finger licking good. Who would thought dubious sounding salted caramel kaya banofee pie can taste so divine. And oh, the carpaccio.... melted in our mouths. Damn, I am getting hungry reliving the eating experience.

The portions were rather small. But we ended up feeling comfortably full which was a refreshing change from our bad habit of taking seam bursting meals.

Anyway, hope everyone had a great holiday. Hang in there with the back to work blues!

left: beef carpaccio with cilantro rocket thai dressing; right: roast-chick-rice-stuffed wing with brandy liver pate

left: giam hee chinese anchovy aglio olio pasta with thai basil; right: spicy dried scallop & pork bee tai bak local rice pasta

left: grilled sting ray thai sambal & lemon onion; right: duck confit with mom's yam cake & plum mustard

left: salted caramel kaya banofee pie; right: osmanthus, chrysanthemum, elder flower granita & jello

Gotta ransack my fridge now.

A late post on Xmas 2010

Once again, the boys (ahem.. I meant...uncles) had their yearly Xmas drinking marathon. I had to shut the windows and balcony doors for the sake of my neighbors' sanity through their drinking din. Though I must say, age must be catching up as the ambiance was somewhat tamer than last year.

It was nice catching up with Yong's friends. Been a while with everyone busy with weddings (2 last year including ours!) and arms full of babies (7 if you count the one still in the bun).

Of cos the inevitable babies questions came up. It is too bad that I chance upon this post only few days ago. I would have loved to use Miss Ene's witty reply that yes of cos we would like to have babies. In fact, we will buy one from NTUC later. HA!

I had a great time taking pix of the toddlers and babies with our Xmas present - a 2nd hand 40D DSLR. Our because even though 2nd hand, it is still really expensive. So Xmas was the perfect excuse to share the cost and "buy" it for each other.

Unfortunately, with incredible bad luck, it stopped working right after our anniversary lunch on new year's day. So it is now in Canon hospital. Double crossing our fingers that we can get it back before our Clubmed trip next week.