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. :)