San Ai Hair

I needed a bang trim and some dead ends cut off, so I made an appointment at San Ai hair, mostly because it seemed like they always had clients and took reservations over the internet.

While it didn't go horribly awry, it wasn't my favorite experience and I will be trying another salon for my next touch-up.

From the outside the salon looked chic, all white and glass. Inside, it was dirty. There was SO MUCH HAIR all over the floor. It looked like no one had cleaned all day. The chairs and robes were cheap - barber style.

My (male) stylist only spoke Japanese (which was fine for me, but I'm not sure if he had any English at all) and was my hair washer, head massager, hair cutter, and stylist. He was nice as could be, but definitely had his own ideas about how to cut hair and wasn't too into following my instructions. For example, I lost the "layer" battle (unbeknownst to me, until it was too late). Despite stating that I did not want to keep the current layers in my hair, and ONLY wanted the dead ends cut off, I ended up with more layers thanks to a little misunderstanding of the term "gizagiza" (ギザギザ, jagged). While I thought this meant that he would chop the ends a little so they wouldn't be so blunt, well, I was wrong. This meant taking thinning shears to the bottom half of my head. And he started in the back, so I couldn't see what he was doing until it was already done. At that point, I wouldn't let him touch my bangs again, although he wanted to ギザギザ them too... (and I thought the ends should be jagged a bit, but one fail was enough).

He blew out my hair and flat ironed it to look all nice and pretty.

The entire experience set me back about 5500 yen. They have a loyalty card if you want to make them your constant.