day 60! takadanobaba

Oh boy. Today was a bit of a slow day. Since we were out all day the day before, hanging out and seeing fireworks, and then getting home took a while, I totally ended up sleeping in this morning. Ok, til afternoon. :( And there was no stopping me cuz I didn't set an alarm, and of course Edwin is too polite to come wake me up and be like dude it's 2pm already gtfo.....


I had originally thought I could go to some different area of Tokyo, either go explore a new place or maybe show Edwin a new part of Tokyo that he hadn't been to yet, but thanks to the greedy sleeping it was a bit late by the time we got to the station. :) I think we had some sushi for dinner.


Anyway since I don't have a great recollection of what happened during the day (I got too behind on the blogging, sorry!) and it wasn't anything groundbreaking, I'll skip to the part I do remember. ;)


At around 7pm, went to Excelsior to get some daily coffee (yay) and waited for an appointment I had at 8pm. If you remember, at some point last week, some girl stopped me at the station and asked to cut my hair for some contest. Well, I had really gone back and forth, back and forth over whether I should do it or not. My main dilemma being that I had JUST gotten my hair cut and permed, and didn't want all that money and effort to go to waste, but on the other hand, I didn't want to waste this opportunity either. A couple of days ago, I had gotten a call from the stylist, whose name is Meg, and dropped by her salon to chat with her (and also to make sure that the salon was real and that it wasn't some scam). And one way or another....I found myself agreeing to let her cut my hair. :)


Originally it had only sounded like I'd put in a day or two, maybe, one to prepare, and one for the day of the contest. But the schedule she'd drawn up for me required me to go to the salon almost every evening! I was a bit miffed about that, but I guess curiosity is a strong motivator. Also not being a quitter. :p


So today was my first appointment, where I thought we were just gonna meet up and talk about what things would happen in the upcoming week.


Nope! Wrong.


Hehe. When we got to the salon (I told Edwin it would only take a bit, so he tagged along. My bad!), Meg wasn't ready for me quite yet. The reason the appointments were in the evenings was cuz that's when she's done with work, and has time to do her own stuff. So we sat in the waiting area and waited, while everyone looked curiously at us. I felt sorta out of place. :S And more and more uneasy that I shouldn't be doing this at all...


When Meg finished up, she took us to this private room in the back. It's kinda cute! It has a normal salon chair, but there's a TV and a small playstation to play games on. I figured this is where the employees to when they want to take a break, but I later found out that they advertise these "koushitsu" or, "private rooms" to customers who prefer not to get their hair cut in the main salon area. For a bit extra, you get some privacy and entertainment. Cute idea!! Never seen anything like it before. There is an adjacent private room for 2 people, in case you want to get your hair cut with a friend. ^^v

Waiting in the private room for Meg, who by now is running like 45 minutes behind schedule. Oh long black hair, I miss you so.


Soooo I was wrong about today being just discussion. :) Looks like Meg wants to get started right away! In a way it's good, there's no more room for wishy-washiness, or qualms about whether this is the right thing to do or not. Oh no.


It's bleach time.

I've never had my hair bleached before. It smells absolutely terrible. Like....well, bleach. And maybe ammonia. It makes your eyes water a bit, and it wrinkled my brain a little, thinking about how much damage this would do to my hair, if the chemicals in the white goop made my nose sting so much just from smelling them. Oh dear. But there's no turning back now....


Soon after combing it in, you can see my hair starting to change color already. Of course I couldn't see it at the time, I was trying too hard not to breathe.

It took almost half an hour, but she painted it into my hair bit by bit, layer by layer, and did the roots of my hair last. I had heard about how much bleaching your hair hurt, and was surprised at how little I felt. I figured I was just abnormally strong or had a very desensitized scalp from all the hair pulling I'd undergone as a child.


...but really it was just that they hadn't painted my scalp yet. Holy shit it hurt!! I know I'm nonchalantly sipping coffee in the pic, but really what I'm thinking is AHHHHHHH motherfucker it feels like Satan is skinny dipping in my braaaaaaaain. T^T


They were really nice about it though, they kept asking does it hurt, does it hurt. Don't push yourself. Let us know when it hurts. I think Meg was worried that my Japanese was so bad that I wouldn't be able to communicate it and that I would faint in the chair or something.


Well, Meg-san. Can you translate AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRGRHGRGRHGRHGRHGRHGRHHHHHH into Japanese for me okudasai? :3


Well, at least it's working. You can see all the colors are slowly getting leached out of my hair. :) Isn't it a bit fascinating though? Normally when you dye your hair, it's like you're adding MORE to it, you're giving it more color. But bleaching your hair, they're taking color out of it. Well....that means that all asians are blonde, doesn't it? We just have extra color on top of that. It's just funny to me cuz I've always thought, in a self-centered fashion, that blondes were asian hair dyed blonde, not that asians were blondes dyed black (phew tongue twister). I tried to focus on these more interesting aspects of the honored and revered school of bleaching, as thousands of tiny daggers pierced my skull.


Eventually I had to cry uncle though, and Meg took me to get all the bleach washed out. She washed my hair at least 5 or 6 times with different nice smelly goopy things. I know there was shampoo and conditioner, as well as treatment. Treatment is some stuff they use to treat your hair so it doesn't get too damaged when either coloring or perming your hair. Fight chemicals with chemicals, eh? :) She had promised me, when she had originally told me that the contest required that I color my hair, that she would take care of my hair and make sure it didn't get damaged, so I did appreciate that.

Hair has been washed and dried, and now we do a bit of eyebrow bleaching so it doesn't look too odd. :) Orange hair and black eyebrows make me look like a unibrow'ed jack o' lantern that escaped from Sesame Street.


So the goal is to get ALL the color out of my hair, which would mean turning it blonde. As it is right now, it's still retained a bit of color which is why it's orange still. Meg said that we will have to go through the bleaching process again to get the rest of the color out.


As it turns out though, I don't hate it! When she'd told me, earlier in the evening, that with only 1 dose of bleach I would be orange-haired for a day I was like what the fuuuuu. -_- Y U NO TELL ME THESE THINGS EARLIER! I'm starting to get a strong feeling that Meg has been painting a pretty picture for my benefit.


But surprisingly, it didn't look that bad. :) I've had one experience, last time I came to Japan, of getting my hair colored to that brown color asians are so fond of. It looked alright, but as it got lighter and lighter it looked crappier and crappier. So I was pretty worried, from experience, that blonde hair would look absolutely awful on me.

But I dunno. Meg said that it suited me, and I'm inclined to somewhat agree. At least, I didn't scream when she took the towel off my head for the first time.


Haha actually it was kind of funny, when she washed the bleach out of my hair she was like "uwa, gaigokujin mitai!" ("wow, you look like a foreigner!") and then she kinda chuckled and muttered "maa, gaigokujin dakara ne" ("well, I guess that's cuz you are a foreigner"). hehe. We both laughed at that one.

Orange hair.

And that was day 1 of Crazy Hair Experience 2012. :)


to be continued....