I decided to find a hair salon this weekend. Well, by find, I mean enter. I have “found” several salons, but have never had the courage to step inside any of them. I don’t know what gave me the gumption to go for it, but I woke up on Saturday morning determined to follow through. I finally chose one that seemed tasteful but affordable (as in less than the $200+ standard I see for a color/cut) and made an appointment for later that afternoon. I used the extra time to explore new areas in downtown Sendai, finish my latest Jane Austen romance, and people-watch from my corner-seat in the second story of a charming café. I even bought myself a Christmas tree, some decorations, and splurged on Nutella from the foreign-foods shop! I’ve wanted Nutella for almost eight months, but it’s about $10 for a 10-ounce jar and practicality has kept me away...I guess the self-indulgence of a salon day finally swayed my judgment!
After several hours of pleasant browsing and proactive stalling, I returned to the salon for my appointment and began talking with my stylist about what I wanted. I came armed with a Japanese/English dictionary and key words/phrases written down that I knew I would need there. We talked for a long time, gesturing, translating, drawing pictures, and finally reaching a point of mutual understanding...sort of. My world has essentially become a real-life game of pictionary/charades ha ha. Finally, I just told him, “I trust you. Let’s try it!”
In all honesty, I was a little nervous at first, but all I wanted was for him to add some brown and blonde sections of color to the crown of my head, just to blend the regrowth and get me through the winter. I calmly watched him work away and it wasn’t until I saw him applying bleach directly to my scalp all over the crown of my head that I really began to worry. Still, I wanted to wait and let the professional do his job and prayed that it would make more sense once I saw the finished product. Well, I saw the finished product at the salon and was shocked by how much blonde he put in my hair! I only wanted a small amount mixed in with the brown, but almost all of the hair he treated looked bleached. However, the lighting in the salon was very poor and I figured that it would look very different in fresh lighting. I smiled, paid, and booked it for home!
I was right; it did look very different in fresh lighting. It looked worse. Much worse! My jaw dropped when I looked in the mirror back at my apartment and saw my ORANGE and YELLOW hair! I wanted to laugh but also wanted to cry; my hair was wretched. Completely awful. I’ve always cracked jokes about what horror stories might ensue if I ever dared to step inside a hair salon out here, but apparently I had no idea what I was actually in for.
What was equally upsetting to me was that I reached for my Nutella as food-consolation only to find that it wasn’t in my shopping bags. Somehow, it fell out or got dropped somewhere along my way home...I finally spent $10 on Nutella and never even got to try it once...! I had to quickly accept the loss of my treat and forced myself to concentrate on finding a solution to the brassy-orange mop on my head.
I called a couple friends for help and arranged with one to meet the next morning for an emergency hair intervention. We went to a drugstore to evaluate our options. (Neither of us has access to professional products out here and there was no way I dared to petition a salon for help.) She suggested re-coloring the blonde to remove the orange and we gave it a try at her house, but it was disappointingly ineffective.
Back at the drugstore, I half-sincerely suggested just dying it all black. We considered other colors but wondered how they would turn out on my hair—and whether my hair could even handle more chemicals/color treatments. Suddenly, I noticed a “hair-treatment rinse” in a blue bottle. Blue cancels out orange, right? I turned to my friend and she readily agreed that it would be our best bet, so I bought it and came back home to try it out...
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| Sad face...this picture doesn't do justice to my calico head, but this is pre-blue gunk. I only snapped one shot, so this is all I've got as future blackmail against myself. See my cute Christmas tree in the back though? YAY! |
I don’t want to turn this into a hair lesson, but I suppose it may help to clarify that salons already use blue in their bleach when they lighten hair in the states in order to offset the orange color pulled from bleached hair. The bleach used on me was white, which means nothing was in the mix to offset the orange. I let it soak for about an hour and noticed a greenish hue developing on my scalp! Ack! I jumped back in the shower and vigorously shampooed somewhere around eighteen times, then left on a conditioning treatment overnight as a peace-offering to my hair.
The good news is that I no longer look like Carrot Top. The bad news is that the crown of my head is still an unbecoming mass of bleached roots with random streaks of brown. More good news is that I’m in Japan and it doesn’t really matter if my hair is blonde or brown or purple; I still look American. More bad news is that I have work pictures in a couple hours and two trips planned within the week with friends that will involve lots of pictures, a.k.a. immutable evidence of my hair’s current condition.
Still, let’s end this on a plus side. In all honesty, it’s just hair and I’ll fix it eventually. I feel ridiculous, but it is still immeasurably better than when I first got it done, and I guess anything that forces me to swallow my pride and vanity a bit has to be good for me, right? Plus, it really is pretty comical. I’m not denying the fact that I was openly disconcerted upon first seeing my reflection in the mirror, but I’ve already laughed about it in conversations with family and friends. And hey, at least I can say that I’ve been to a Japanese salon... Besides, our most embarrassing stories are usually the most enjoyable for everyone else, aren’t they?
I think I’m going straight to the hair salon from the airport next year... In the meantime, maybe I’ll just pick up a hat or two...and another jar of Nutella...?
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| You can't see the full effect of the nasty yellow in its true hue, but you can kinda get the idea. It still looks pretty bad in real-life but, hey, what can ya do? |
