So it's taken me a while to shoot off this first email. I've been alternately busy and lazy, and the unfortunate consequence is that a few charming anecdotes will have likely fallen through the cracks. However, there have been plenty of good times since I arrived here in Japan, more than enough to adequately realize the beginning of the hi-light reel I present to you today. Let us begin.
I arrived back in the old stomping grounds of Iwade, Wakayama, on the evening of June 6th. My home-boy Yasuhide Ueda did me the great favor of taking me in for an extended weekend when I first arrived. This deed is twice as admirable considering that he suffered all the pains of Kevin-the-house-guest with none of the compensatory advantages of living with Kevin-the-cheerful-charming-
Despite my sad state of half-being, this did not stop us at all from accomplishing all those shenanigans I'd been eagerly awaiting since deciding to return to Japan. I ran around Iwade a bit, visiting my old neighbors Mercedes and Rich, old bosses Dan and Masaya, and returning to the old dojo to see Suzuma-san and practicing a bit of Aikido with the kids. I can still whoop all their asses. Saturday night was the glorious return to Osaka night-life, but not before a special gift from Yasuhide and the focus of this email.
Yasuhide is an incredibly accomplished man of diverse passions and remarkable skills. He is, barring some of the more intricately nuanced slang, perfectly fluent in conversational English (fan-f*cking-tastic, you might say). He is diligent student of both Spanish and French. He is a master of the Japanese tea ceremony and learned in the art of ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement). But most of all, and of great importance to me, he is an extraordinarily talented and award-winning barber.
Yasuhide's gift to me was an exquisite haircut ("the better to meet girls with, Kevin"; how could I refuse?). Before you all guffaw, hold your breath a moment and embark on a journey of follicle enlightenment. As with most things that enter Japanese culture and industry, the seemingly mundane is broken down, analyzed, improved, synthesized and re-engineered into an impressive new product. Sure, Japanese barbers are marked by those familiar twirling red-and-whites outside dilapidated buildings sentried by measured old men with envious coifs, but that's as far as the commonality goes.
Yasuhide's joint is in the bottom road-side corner of his house. It's a family-run operation where he and his father cut hair and his mother specializes in shaves. The salon is an older place with an 80s vogue style. The service chairs are these unremarkable faded red leather dentist-chair look-alikes… that is until Yasuhide
flips the switch, powers up, and its game on.
A Yasuhide haircut is no simple hack and slash affair. Even an unremarkable hair-style like my own is given its due consideration. Back home, when I used to go to the barber, it was a simple zip zip zip of the electric razor with some scissor work to even out the rough patches. When I figured out the real ease of the process (well, to give credit where credit is due, my brother Mike is the first one to have invested), I went out and bought my own razor and started cutting my own hair, occasionally calling upon some familial assistance for trustworthy straightening at the back of my noggen. I informed Yasuhide of this sort of simplicity and he swallowed a knowing chuckled, avoiding condescension out of friendship. Razors, apparently, are for amateurs, and even beneath any serious amateur. Professionals (samurais? ninjas? Leon, anyone?) use the blade.
I lay back and Yasu puts on a utility belt that would make Batman jealous. The belt contains an arsenal of shears and combs, powders and puffs. Lastly he unwraps his prized master's shears from their felt cloth resting place and inserts them into their dedicated belt compartment. To give a little perspective, these shears are worth at least 300,000 yen and are, I think, registered with the government. Lock and load.
The process begins slowly, a muted crescendo of hygiene products. First comes the hair tonic. Then the face cream. A hot towel, to be sure. Face massage. Face wash. Hair wash. Now the cutting begins… a preliminary cut to take out the rougher patches, and then the main event. The master's shears come out and its hairmageddon on my cranium. The zip zip of razor-sharp blades buzzing in my ear is hypnotic and that tingly feeling on the back of my neck lulls me into a daze.
Yasuhide was slowing down and I was coming to, and I just about got out of the chair prematurely. Imagine, if you will, that old PBS bad-ass Bob Ross. Bob would come to the twenty-fifth minute of his hypnotic session with a perfectly pleasant painting. You were just about ready to close up shop and hang up yet another mountain landscape when Bob flippantly decided to plant a friendly little tree right down the middle of your masterpiece. No, Bob, don't do it. Too late. And yet, deep down you really knew to trust in Bob… and trust in Bob you did. When it was all said and done, you couldn't imagine your painting without that friendly little tree. Moral of the story: Bob knows. Likewise, Yasuhide knows. I thought the masterpiece was satisfactorily finished, but Yasu knew better. Once, twice, three times he perfected my neckline. Combing upon combing until strays were vanquished from sight. Sideburns even enough to level a table.
In my dreamy haze, Yasu eased in another hair wash, and finally an agonizingly satisfying head massage. The final death-grip did the trick when the sudden pop at the top of my spine released all the stress of traveling halfway around the world and not being able to sleep properly for several days and I just sat there dazed, looking in the mirror and admired my own beauty.
As if this treatment weren't enough, Yasu's mom insisted on a gift of her own: the perfect shave. My facial tissue has never received such careful indulgence. She operated with an old-school switchblade razor, the somewhat shaky hand putting my nerves on end. But this was another pampered journey of mind-numbing massages and revitalizing creams, exfoliations and relaxations, and I ate up every moment.
At some point during my shave Yasuhide's father walked over with a stack of manga, presumably for me to read. These types of manga are found everywhere in Japan: convenient stores, coffee shops, internet cafes, coin laundries, toilets in even the most far-flung locations. Anywhere a guy might be sitting around for 10 minutes or more you will find these iconic manga stacks. These biblical volumes always seem to be printed on faded yellow, pink, or blue tissue paper and bound together with a glossy cover featuring a scantily clad barely-18. I don't really understand the cohesion of this particular sub-culture much beyond that, except that it is clearly well regarded enough to completely permeate Japanese society. Narrative continuity in general is baffling – are these paper weights at all related or does each present some self-contained account of borderline adult manga archetype? If I had to make an educated guess I'd say the stories invariably involve some outrageously pumped ex-Yakuza-turned-good-guy whose girlfriend probably gets kidnapped for said Yakuza's betrayal and thus our questionable protagonist is forced to go renegade once again, inevitably tearing shit up and saving helpless girlfriend, ultimately enjoying all the, ah, fruits, that success entails. But that's just a guess, what do I know. What I do know is that given that men from the age of ten upwards seem to appreciate this 
particular genre it speaks volumes about Japanese gender relationships. And I digress.
Mr. Ueda brought me over a stack of these manga and I really had no interest in reading them, happy enough to bask in the service I was receiving, but when I picked one up to be polite he gave me the most quizzical look. Caught off guard, and I was mumbling a "no no no, I'm not actually into this stuff, I just… well, you just… but I thought…" and while that was falling out of my mouth and I realized he spoke no English anyway, he took the book back from me, stacked 3 high on each side of me and finally laid a plank around my lap. Confused and embarrassed relief flooded over me. He next brought out a steam machine, placed it on the plank and aimed at my face. A steam bath, of course, and why not.
Things had been great up until this point, to say the least. Now I was in heaven. The steam softens up the stiff facial hair and, combined with some magically warm shaving cream and a blade sharp enough to make Hattori Hanzo cry a single tear, gives a remarkably close shave with none of the searing burns that typically accompany such precision.
When it was all said and done I was finally able to stand up in a state of grace and examined the job in the mirror. It grieves me to write this, it grieves me to remember, that this incredible experience turned out to be an unfortunately uneven and jagged shave. Like seriously not even close. Shocked and perplexed, I could only and still do account for this circumstance in that the irregular contours of my foreign devil's jaw line were simply too overwhelming to properly accommodate.
Blame for this tragedy was entirely my own and, given the importance of the coming festivities (a night out in Osaka is no laughing matter), it behooved me to rectify on my own the situation with all expedience. Unwilling to hazard insult to my gracious hosts I crept down to the shower with pocket razor and shaving cream hidden in the folds of my towel. Treachery concluded, at long last I was on my way to Osaka for a night that was, unquestionably due to my new digs, entirely successful. Thanks again, Yasuhide. I'm back, woot.
