Barber Visit -July 06

Eric got his hair cut yesterday. A Japanese barber shop is a pleasure to visit. What would be 15-minutes of flying scissors back home is an hour of meticulous attention that includes a hair washing before and after, hot towel treatments and a neck and shoulder massage. When it comes to communicating, I usually use gestures to show the length, knowing that the barber is humoring me and will do what he wants anyway.

We went to a nice shop in our neighborhood. I was surprised when the barber handed us several laminated photo sheets showing different hair styles. After Eric made his selection, the barber took out a magna-doodle board and drew sideburn options. Then he scribbled 'age'” and showed us the price chart with different levels for different ages. Cool. It was so gratifiying to feel like we actually communicated.

While Eric was having his hour worth of pampering (all for $17), I was left to wonder if the Isahaya hair cutting community had gotten together to decide what to do about illiterate foreigners. As we were leaving and thanking him, he points to himself and starts writing on his board again. Ah, I think, he likes us so much he's going to tell us his name so we'll come back.
What he wrote was 'Deaf'.