Bye Bye Cowlick!

For as long as I can remember, I've had a bad cowlick by my forehead - and unfortunately no matter what I've done (straightening, blow-drying) it's always been a pain in my butt. Usually right after I finish doing my hair it'll look okay, but by 4 PM it literally looks like a large bovine has licked the front of my hairline and flattened it.

This is extremely frustrating for me, as I am VERY particular about my hair - as my siblings, parents, boyfriend, and roommates all are very aware of.

I had read that Tokyo is known for its hair salons, and after living here for a month I figured that they must live up to that hype, since Japanese women here have the most flawless hair I have ever seen. And no Japanese woman is ever left wanting for a hair salon in their area - on the main street in the little town that I reside in, there are FOUR hair salons.

I considered going to one of these salons just out of sheer convenience, but then realized that the likelihood of my hairstylist speaking English was rather low, and I didn't want to risk ending up looking worse walking out of salon, wishing I had my old cowlick and bushy mane back. So I did my research and discovered a very highly reviewed salon in Harajuku called Watanabe. The staff speaks English, and all of the stylists are trained to cut both Japanese and Caucasian hair.

The reason why it's so important that they know how to cut both kinds of hair is simply because of genetics: Japanese women have incredibly thick strands of hair, while "Western" women tend to have much thinner strands of hair. Also, Japanese hair reacts differently to dyes and other treatments, so they have to use different products that could fry Caucasian hair because they tend to be more powerful.

So, after reading up and getting the phone number of the salon, I made an appointment for the same day in the afternoon - the receptionist who picked up spoke perfect English, so that put me at ease!

My stylist's name was Tommy (a girl) who is a native Japanese but lived in London for 4 years, so she spoke English with a really cool hybrid English/Japanese accent. We had a very in-depth consultation about what I wanted to have done, and in the end I decided to get bangs and also have my hair thinned out with a lot of layering. Every single step of the process was incredibly thorough - she shampooed my hair twice, each time scouring my scalp as if she was trying to de-lice me (not pleasant) and she must've wrapped me up in at least four different aprons so as to not get any water or hair on my clothes.  She also gave me a shiatsu scalp massage (weird) and a neck massage (lovely).

Finally, after about 20 minutes, she actually began to cut my hair. She went at it as if she was performing brain surgery, and dried and straightened my hair using the same tedious precision. Unfortunately, she rarely spoke to me; I tried to strike up a conversation like I would with my hairstylist back home, but no dice.

On the whole, however, it was a cool experience, and I'm very pleased with how my hair turned out:

I may go back one more time if my hair starts to look raggedy by late March or April - still, I did miss my old salon and hairstylist back home. I'll probably just wait until I get back to get my hair cut again!