Clearing My Head

Welcome

2011-11-11T12:00:00.001+09:00

Welcome to Clearing My Head. This blog-style website documents the adventures I had when I decided to have a haircut in Japan in the summer of 2010. Please explore the links at your leisure, share it with anyone else who may be interested, and leave a comment to let me know what you think!

Thank you,

Sparky Mark Baldwin

November 2011

断髪式 (Danpatsushiki) - The Final Cut

2010-08-15T21:30:00.001+09:00

After the final dreadlock had been removed, I was left with a scalp featuring many hairs of varying lengths. The overall effect was reminiscent of hairstyles seen in the decade of my birth, and could be described using the name of a certain species of fish.

The summer heat was still intense, so after a couple of days, I was more than ready to be rid of this headfish.

The removal of the final remaining hairs took place on a Sunday evening at a family barbecue in the garden of Shinya's brother's house.

Since Ji had not been allowed to cut off any dreadlocks, despite having made great and heroic efforts towards the cause, and since the electric hair clippers we were those that he used to shave his own head, it was appropriate that he would start and conclude the final cut.

To start off the ceremony, I proffered the clippers to him and said, "I have a favour to ask..."

Ji knew exactly what I wanted, and seized the clippers with great relish.

I had forgotten how good it felt to have one's head shaved.

Members of Shinya's family and my other peach farm colleagues took turns to shave my scalp.

After it was all over, my head felt very light, and I knew that having short hair would take a while to get used to.

This was shorter than I had ever had my hair before (see history) and I found out that the scalp is a very good and sensitive temperature guage.

Throughout that evening and for the next few days, I could feel the turbulence of the air as it flowed around my head. As I walk forward, the air flows from the front and eddies caught and cooled the back in a centralized stream. Conversely, whenever I stop moving, I can feel the heat of the day or evening permeating my head. So it seems that the hair is good insulation for the brain.
The following day, I got sunburnt on my scalp for the first (and not the last) time. I also found that hitting my head on doorframes had become at least twice as painful, now that I had no cushioning.

So,
What happened to the remaining hair that was cut off on this momentous occasion?

Encounter 46: The Forty-third and final dreadlock removal

2010-08-13T12:30:00.000+09:00

As the young couple approached the peach shack, I had a subtle feeling of "This is it!" And indeed it was. After asking where I was from, the second comment he made was "that's cool!" which he said whilst making a gesture in the vague direction of the side of his head. I asked him what exactly he thought was cool, and he answered, "hairstyle". So I told him my spiel as I got my scissors out and handed them over.

As Daiki (for that was the cutter's name) excitedly brandished the scissors, I told him that I had had 42 dreadlocks, and this was the last one to go. I repeated this a couple of times loudly into the peach shop, and was answered with a loud cheer. Shinya came out playing the guitar, and there were general diverse celebrations.

I was very excited: this truly felt like a momentous occasion. Daiki positioned the scissors close to the root and skillfully snipped through.

Suddenly, after 9 years, I was no longer a person with dreadlocks.

Daiki seemed to want to keep the lock, so I asked him what he would exchange for it.

Neither he nor his girlfriend believed they had anything with them worth swapping for it, so they went out to have lunch, promising to come back with something to exchange.
After a fair while, they came back and presented me with a packet of abura-tori kami: paper with which to remove excess oil from one's nasal pores. I was not sure that I needed this, but it seems to be a common gift in Japan.

I sold them some peaches and put an extra one or two in, and after a bit more conversation, they went on their way back to Tokyo and left me dreadless.

I felt free - not just to be rid of my hair, but to have come to the end of a long drawn-out series of performances that could start at any time.

The final stage in the process was to get rid of the remaining hair. Being in Japan, this turned out to be a proper ceremonial occasion.

Encounter 45: The Forty-second dreadlock removal

2010-08-12T15:30:00.000+09:00

I had just sold a box of peaches to a couple, when I noticed that the girl was wearing a necklace featuring a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. As I was handing over her change, I mentioned it, saying "Ah! You have a British Coin!" She corrected me saying, disappointedly, "Oh. I though it was Canadian." And I realized that it was, after all, a Canadian coin.

This initial exchange opened up the conversation to a level of friendliness that enabled the guy to look at my hair, point to his own and say, "I'd like to get Rastas too..." I told him that it was not that difficult, and that he could indeed have one that very day, since mine were in the process of being removed - by anyone who mentioned them to me. He was very happy to cut one off, and especially keen to keep the lock.

I asked what he wanted to exchange for it, and he and his girlfriend went to the car to find something to exchange for it. They came back with one of the most bizarre objects of exchange in the whole project: a hairband featuring a bright green flashing Minnie-Mouse style bow, which Jii took a great liking to.

They also gave me a figurine in the shape of an athropomorphic warthog.

There was now only one dreadlock left to cut.

Encounter 44: The Forty-first dreadlock removal

2010-08-08T17:30:00.000+09:00

At the peach shack, I was waiting, as had become usual. I was waiting for people to come and take an interest in peaches, so that I could give them some to taste, or show them to the pick-your-own orchard, and I was also waiting for people to take an interest in, or at least make some mention of, my rapidly diminishing supply of dreadlocks, so that the summer heat would continue getting less and less oppressive, and so that the strain on my neck would continue to diminish.

Just as I was beginning to think that I could no longer bear the heat, a family of 3 - mother, father and son - showed up and started talking to me. They were enjoying their holiday in sunny Fukushima, and told me all about it. The mother made a nonchalant mention of my hair, something along the lines of "so tell me about your hair." Upon the appearance of the scissors, which I produced, as usual, from my pocket, her immediate reaction was, "no, I couldn't possibly cut it!" and she handed the scissors to her son. He too was tentative, but I insisted that since I only had three dreadlocks left, it would be a huge favour to cut one more off. It was the father who eventually cut off a dreadlock: he seemed to have no qualms about its removal.

Although the mother was not initially keen to keep the dreadlock, Shinya the peach farmer came and suggested that she keep it as an o-mamori (protective charm) which, as I explained, was a similar fate to that of many of the other dreadlocks.

She tied it to her handbag, and then started searching in her bag for something to exchange for it. This search proved fruitless, but the family were all concerned that something of value should be exchanged for the hair. So the father handed me his zippo lighter. I thought at first this was a rather valuable, but he insisted that since it had taken me 9 years to grow, such a valuable item was worth the exchange. Shinya's father told the family that he too considered it Mottainai to exchange the Zippo, but I explained to all those present that many people had told me it was Mottainai to cut off any my hair, so it was rather appropriate to exchange a lock for something else that was Mottainai. Perhaps this is the secret of bartering.

The next day, the family returned on their way home from holiday, and presented me with a plastic fan. This kept me cool while I waited for the next dreadlock removal.

Encounter 43: The Fortieth dreadlock removal

2010-08-07T17:30:00.000+09:00

A girl who had breezed past the peach stall returned after a while, and sat in the smoking area smoking a cigarette. As a peach salesman, I was duty-bound to offer her a taste of peach whether she was smoking or not, and she must have accepted the peach I offered her, as we got talking. About the second thing she said - while stroking her hair - was something about my hair. I think she said "how long have you had those in?" evidently assuming that my dreadlocks were extensions. I told her that in fact this was my real hair and the longest remaining parts had been growing for 9 years since being cut. I explained to her the method by which my hair was being cut, handed her the scissors, and asked her to take part in the process.

She seemed somewhat surprised but was content to reach up and cut off a hair.

Her friend, however, couldn't believe it and almost rolled over backwards laughing.

Then, of course, came the question of what to do with the detached lock. Ji came and tried to persuade the girls that maybe they did not want to keep a smelly old dreadlock, but they asserted that keeping it was a better idea, he suggested tying the lock to one of their handbags.

The girls took a while to go to their car and discuss what they would exchange for the lock. Their first suggestion had been a bottle opener.

I was initially averse to this idea, as I don't drink alcohol and so have very little use for a bottle opener,. The girls, however, pointed out that they had very little use for a disembodied dreadlock, so it turned out to be an appropriate exchange after all.

... not sure what to do with it...

An Appropriate Exchange

... still not sure what to do with it...

They left, and I began the wait for the next removal...

Encounter 42: The Thirty-ninth dreadlock removal

2010-08-07T17:00:00.000+09:00

A group of people came into the peach shop. I had the feeling I had met them before, and they chatted to me in a familiar way. After a bit of conversation, the mother of the group, an excitable and loudly-spoken lady, waved her hands vaguely round her neck area and said something referring to my hair. I produced them with my scissors, which caused much mirth, and some disbelief about the next logical step.

The group seemed to be friends of Ji, who was also hovering around with an air of excitement. I wondered if Ji was in on the act: perhaps he had sent the group to me from the café to ask about my dreadlocks. Ji seemed fixated on increasing the frequency of dreadlock removals. I asked the group directly whether the hair question had been planted, but they assured me that they had no idea what was going on. Since I had no evidence for or against Ji's direct involvement in this encounter, I did not worry too much.

We went outside into the light for the cut, and the girls looked on, seemingly intent on creating a party atmosphere...

... their mother continued to seem somewhat bewildered ...

...then she suddenly came at me, brandishing the scissors!

I flung my other remaining dreadlocks out of the way to safety...

... and she POKED ME IN THE EYE!

Actually, that's not true. She really just sought approval from her daughters...

...and with joyful disbelief...

...cut...

...off...

...the thirty-ninth...

...dreadlock!

Having cut off the dreadlock, the mother assured me she did not need it, but implored me to keep it safe and take good care of it.

So this is one dreadlock that I still have.

The same cannot be said for the next one to be cut off.

Encounter 41: The Thirty-eighth dreadlock removal

2010-08-07T15:00:00.000+09:00

A hot busy day in the peach stall. Michi, the girl from the café, was in the office eating a bagel for lunch.

She noticed that I had shaved off my beard, and I explained that I had done so because it was such a hot summer. She agreed that it was very hot, and came to sit in the cooler part of the shop. We must have continued the beard conversation, as she suddenly asked if I had cut some of my hairs off as well. I realized she had neither cut nor been told about the cutting of my hair, so on the strength of her question was eligible to cut off a dreadlock. I handed over the scissors and explained to her my spiel.

Michi seemed a bit surprised by my explanation, but also seemed rather excited to have this first-time experience of cutting someone's hair off.

I wondered for a moment whether Michi would keep the lock or not, but she decided, after a moment's hesitation, that she would. Shinya came in and excitedly tied the hair to Michi's bag. I asked her for an exchange, and she looked briefly in her bag, but she couldn't think of anything to give me, and promised she would bring me something the next day.

The next afternoon, I was folding pamphlets in the office, when Michi appeared. She told me she had brought me something, as promised. It was a heavy metal spoon coated in a kind of resin. It would, she told me, come in handy on my travels.

My travels would not continue, however, until well after the next dreadlock and all the others had been removed

Encounter 40: The Thirty-seventh dreadlock removal

2010-08-04T12:30:00.000+09:00

After a hot-spring bath and a long-anticipated face shave, I slept for a while in the bath house. I awoke to the sound of a gaggle of ladies discussing what country I might be from. I answered the unasked question in Japanese, and they plied me with questions, while a husband patiently waited. One of the ladies eventually asked if my hair was real, and one of her friends answered her with the assertion that they must surely be extensions, mustn't they?

I allowed a moment or two for such assumptions before getting out my scissors, asserting the genuine nature of my hair, and inviting them to cut one off.

The lady who took the scissors seemed a little confused by what I meant her to do, until I removed all doubt by directing the scissors to the base of the lock she had selected.

Taking one or two snips, she freed the lock from my head, and then asked, "now what do we do with it?"
"Indeed," I replied, and after the slightest pause asked if she wanted to keep it. To my surprise, the answer was "yes!" The ladies all agreed that it should be an exchange, but said that since they had only come out to have a bath, they had nothing with them. Their bags were full of evidence to the contrary, and soon they were all rooting through their bags in search of some exchangeable object.

One of them offered me a rather precious-looking finely embroidered pink purse, but I said it looked rather too precious. I told them some of the other objects people had been exchanging for the locks (shampoo, umbrellas and other useful things) and pointed to a pair of cheap plastic hair brushes, hinting that one of those would do, but either the hint was not taken, or they did not feel a cheap plastic hairbrush was a good exchange. Eventually, one of the ladies found a slightly less cheap-looking plastic hairbrush in the bottom of her bag, and this turned out to be an exchange acceptable to all parties.

Since when did I get so picky about the objects that were exchanged? Perhaps an element of self-protection is an inherent aspect of bartering.

We said our farewells and the ladies left, and I hitchhiked back down to the peach farm, but it was another few days before the next eligible mention of my dreadlocks.

Encounter 39: The Thirty-sixth dreadlock removal

2010-08-03T13:30:00.000+09:00

I was sitting having lunch by a mountain lake when I heard a familiar-sounding voice say "Kirigirisu-jin desu!" - It's the grasshopper man!

The voice belonged to one of a small group of elementary school students. When I had passed an hour or two before on my way up the trail, I had made a pun on the similarity of the Japanese words for grasshopper-man and Englishman. The boy who spoke and his buddy asked me what I was eating, and other questions concerning the colour of my eyes, the nature of life in England, and so on, and then the kid on the left asked me "did you grow your hair?" I replied in the affirmative, and thanked him as I reached into my pocket, from where I produced my scissors.

As he took the scissors, I asked if he would cut my hair. He seemed incredulous and hesitant, so his friend (who had initially spoken) grabbed the scissors from him and between them, they selected a dreadlock to cut. I challenged them on why they wanted to cut that one in particular, and they said "because it's brownish". I went through the hairs further back on my head and found one that was rather more brownish, and was also two dreadlocks combined in a single root. I felt that since there were two of them, this double lock was a more appropriate target.

The kid who did the cutting went straight in for the root, and almost got my finger off as I was holding the dreadlock. The deed was done in two snips, and I held up the hair and asked if the kids had any need to keep it.

They most emphatically did. As I handed it over, I asked what they might like to exchange for it, and their teacher enthusiastically turned this into a lesson that you can't get things for free: there must be some exchange. The logical things for Japanese elementary school children to swap for anything are snacks and sweets, and with a bit of encouragement from their teacher, who agreed with me that this should be an exchange, they gave me a variety of potato- and sugar-based snacks.

The boys decided to cut the hair in two, so that they had one bit each, so asked to borrow my scissors again.

One bit for you, one bit for me.

After a group photo, the boys promised to take care of the dreadlocks, and perhaps hang them in their classroom, they headed off around the lake, leaving me to feed the ducks while I finished my lunch.

After walking in the mountains for a couple of days, I went in search of a public bath house. This became the scene for the next dreadlock removal.

Encounter 38: The Thirty-fifth dreadlock removal

2010-07-28T22:00:00.000+09:00

I was just about to get into the bath after a hard day's work on the farm, when Onishi, one of the other farm workers, called out from the next room to ask if I wanted to go out to the onsen later on, to meet up with Shinya's friend Seinoshin who was visiting from Kamakura for a few days.

I decided to go along, and the four of us chatted for a while in the onsen reception before going along the long corridors leading to the outside bath. In the changing room, just after Shinya and Onishi had gone through to the bath, Seinoshin said to me, "your hair is... rather... great, isn't it?" at which I produced my scissors and said my spiel.

Seinoshin later told me that he had been very impressed by the fluid nature in which I produced my scissors and told him about my project. This fluidity was to be expected, since I had now had 37 similar encounters previously.
Seinoshin seemed interestyed in my method of hair removal, and was happy to partake. From a selection of locks he chose precisely the one I was thinking of having cut next, and cut it with concentrated panache.

I told him that he could keep it if he wanted, and he said he certainly did, so I asked him to think about what he would exchange for it. He carefully stowed it in his clothes basket, and we went through to the bath and told the other two about the cut: they were most excited and congratulated us both. I told them all the story of my hair's background with Japan.

After a good long soak, we all dried off, reclothed, and traveersed the long corridor back to the reception area, which also contained a gift shop. We were about to say our farewells when I reminded Seinoshin that he said he would think about an exchange for the dreadlock. He said he had indeed been thinking about it and wandered around the gift shop looking for something appropriate. What he found was highly appropriate: a bar of soap made with water from the hot spring.

I thanked him and we made our farewells.

Shinya, Onishi and their friends are all keen tweeters, and a few days later, they told me about an interesting tweet by someone who I gather must be related to Seinoshin:

"Yesterday a single dreadlock arrived by Express Mail. I was wondering if it was ingredients/materials for a Shime or Waraji, but today the explanation arrived. It's like being in a Coen Brothers or David Lynch movie..."

Shime can either be translated as

judo choking (strangling) techniques

(Shinto) rope used to cordon off consecrated areas or as a talisman against evil

....

These are indeed interesting potential uses for a detached dreadlock. (Indeed, many of the dreadlocks that were removed from my head became or were exchanged for o-mamori - talismans)

Waraji are straw sandals of the type used by pilgrims. Had I kept more of the dreadlocks I had removed, that too would have been a good use for them - although I suspect that with all the travelling I have been doing, they would have worn out rather quickly.

I assume Seinoshin must have sent the dreadlock home, before arriving a couple of days later to explain.

If the reactions to one simple dreadlock go this far, the complete extent of the repercussions of this project will never be fully known. Indeed, what might the parents of the schoolchildren who cut the next lock off think of their new possession on their return home?

Encounter 37: The Thirty-fourth dreadlock removal

2010-07-27T17:30:00.000+09:00

Building a wood-inlaid concrete floor involves a lot of bending down and getting back up again, and such activity will cause long, heavy hair to flop around rather a lot, even if it is tied back. I was helping build such a floor in the peach sales stall on a peach farm, and a lady who was a friend or relation of the peach farming family passed by and started chatting. She was known on the farm as "Momo-baa-chan" or "Granny Peach" - I think she owned some of the peach fields that the farm used. As I stood up to chat with her, my dreadlocks must have flopped about a bit more, because she said "Gosh, isn't your hair long! I haven't really noticed it before." She must have been a rare member of the local community who did not know about the project I was undertaking. Whether or not she had noticed my dreadlocks before, this was undoubtably a mention of them, and qualified for a cutting request, since I did not recall any conversation with her about my project. So we sat down in the peach shack and had a long conversation about all sorts of things, in amongst which I explained to her all about what I was up to.

Eventually, despite not appearing particularly keen to take part, Granny Peach cut one of my dreadlocks off.

selecting a lock

taking a run-up

She certainly had no interest in keeping it, and asked me if I wouldn't take it to a hospital so that it could be made into a wig for someone with no hair.

Well, the ability to make a wig from a single dreadlock was questionable, and I could envisage that if I turned up at a hospital to present a dreadlock, begging them to take it to give to someone who had lost their hair, then I might very well be asked to leave - or asked to stay if it happened to be a hospital of a particular specialism...

Perhaps it was mean and selfish of me to remove my hair as a travel project, rather than donating it all to a hairless individual, but I believe that through this project, I have spread interest, fascination and enthusiasm wider than would have been the case had I removed my hair all in one go and sent it to Locks of Love. (It seems, too, that Locks of Love do not accept dreadlocks anyway.)

As it happened, I did put this hair - and the others I had kept - to use as a sort of wig for myself. I intended to keep my hair removal a secret from my family until I next met them in person. When I video-Skyped with my family a few months later, I wore my head band with the dreadlocks I'd kept stuffed into it. They did not notice the thinness of my hair, so my secret was safe, allowing me to keep the surprises for a later date.

To the next dreadlock.

Encounter 36: The Thirty-third dreadlock removal

2010-07-18T16:00:00.000+09:00

I was tending the peach stall when a chatty regular customer appeared on the scene. About the third or fifth thing she mentioned was my dreadlocks. I wondered if she had been cajoled by Jii into mentioning it, but had no way of telling. So I began telling her my spiel about the dreadlock removal project. Half way through, she left, but came back and seemed very interested in what I had to say.

This lady seemed un-surprised that I was in the process of removing my dreadlocks, and happily accepted the scissors.

Perhaps by this stage I had few enough dreadlocks remaining (32 down, 11 to go) that it was fairly obvious what was going on. She also did not seem at all reticent to cut off the lock fairly low down. I chose for her a double lock growing from a single thin root.

After cutting the dreadlock, the lady held it for a second before deciding very quickly that she did not want it. She decided to give it back to me as a present, so I asked her what I should do with it.

She was not too sure, but did not seem particularly impressed by the idea of it as a kazarimono or decoration.

Another couple of customers were in the shop at the same time as this exchange was going on, and they seemed rather bewildered and surprised - perhaps even excited by what was happening around them. Perhaps they were the true beneficiaries of the exchange, as the lady who did the cutting seemed very blasé about the encounter, now that the dreadlock had been cut off.

Her last comment to me before she left was "put it in the combustible rubbish, won't you?" So I decided that this is what I would do.

Some time later, I found a rubbish bin marked 燃えるゴミ - moeru gomi (burnable garbage, or combustible rubbish) and deposited the dreadlock in the bin.

UPDATE (1 year on)

In editing the photographs, I have become aware of a grave mistake in proceedings. I neglectfully took little notice of which of my kept dreadlocks I placed in the combustible garbage can. It turns out that I am still in posession of the 33rd dreadlock, forked in two with a thin base. The dreadlock in the burnable garbage must be one of the others... can you spot which one?

To the next dreadlock

Encounter 35: The Thirty-second Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-14T19:00:00.000+09:00

We were sitting down to supper at the end of a day's work on the peach farm. The peach farmer's mother sat down next to me and asked me how long I had been growing my hair. This prompted my spiel, which seemed strangely formal in the context of a family meal, and this in turn prompted a general conversation about my hair. The peach farmer, Shinya, who had himself mentioned my dreadlocks for the first time that very morning walked in on this conversation and realized from the topic of conversation that another dreadlock cutting encounter had been triggered. My hair, being the topic of conversation, was in the process of being mentioned when Ji, Shinya's father came into the room. Joining the conversation, he asked if my hair was extensions, and I responded by telling him that no, it was my real hair. Shinya got very excited at this point, believing that yet another hair mention had occurred. However, since my hair was already the topic of coinversation, I realized that Ji's comment did not count as a trigger. It can only be an unprompted mention of my hair that acts as a trigger for its removal, otherwise the whole lot would be off in one go, which would defeat the entire point of the process. Ji subsequently caused (or attempted to cause) a variety of chaos in my implementation of the process. He would come and talk about my dreadlocks as I was selling peaches, prompting customers to take an interest and mention my locks, in an attempt to speed up the process. He did not understand for a while that in fact, what he was doing may have delayed the process, as he was inadvertently removing cutting eligibility from anyone he mentioned my hair to. After he realized that he could not mention my hair, he would still come past and flick my hair, or point to it grinning, in an attempt to draw attention to it. But he had little luck with this, and the process continued organically.

Ji's mischievousness notwithstanding, his wife's mention of my dreadlock did eventually result in her cutting a dreadlock off, a couple of days after her mention of it. By this time, she had got quite used to the idea of dreadlock removal, and after a brief stumble over the thickness of the lock that I recommended, she cut it off with a few snips of the scissors.

When I asked Shinya's mother what should be done with the dreadlock, she firmly stated that she had no need for it. She left it to me to decide.

After the cut, I felt a deep release of tension, further reinforcing the belief that the scalp and hair store a tangle of feeling. A big load of locked-up feeling was oozing through my scalp.

I initially thought that it might share the same fate as Shinya's dreadlock: to be hung in an apple tree. But the next morning, I was doing some construction work when I suddenly realized what needed to be done with the lock. My colleague Nikaido-kun and I were building a new floor in the peach stall.

We were spreading cement in between wooden slats, creating a wood and concrete floor. I was wondering what should be done with the dreadlock that had been cut the night before, when I suddenly realized: this was the place!

The hair was placed in between the wooden slats and covered in cement.

Old farmhouses in Wales have been found to contain hair, shoes, and even in one case, the carcass of a cat. These were perhaps thought to be good luck, so I anticipated that embedding a dreadlock in the floor of the peach shack might bring good luck to the peach sales that summer. This dreadlock thus became, like many of the others, a form of o-mamori, a good luck charm or talisman.

The next dreadlock to be cut was not so highly-thought-of.

Encounter 34: The Thirty-first Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-14T09:00:00.000+09:00

It started in the workshed, on the morning of my second day of apple thinning.

I had arrived at the Anzai Kajuen fruit farm and had been accepted pretty much as I was, by pretty much everyone there. Nobody noticed that the dreadlocks were already fewer than the alotted scalp space. But why should they? I thought for the first day or so that the Anzai family would be so unassuming that my hair would never be mentioned and I would have the rest of my dreadlocks for the rest of my life.

So when Shinya the farmer casually asked, while I was donning my overalls on the second day, that I had very long hair, I was taken aback. When the trigger for a performance is outside of ones own control, one has to be extremely vigilant at all times. On this occasion, as on many others, I was caught unprepared. My camera and recording devices were packed away indide the house, but were I to rush inside and retrieve them, the moment would be gone, and I would have to explain my sudden absence from the call of apple-thinning duties.

I also realized that since I was due to be at the farm for some weeks, the actual cutting could take place later on, or even the following day or week. So instead of running, I continued the conversation, and told him briefly that anyone who mentioned my hair would be asked to cut one off. (Shinya later told me that at that point he thought 'Ah! I bet this is one of his performancey things')

Since the apples were calling to be thinned, we agreed to do some 'talking' later on, which also implied that we might do some hair cutting.

I approached Shinya during the lunch break, thinking that would be a good time for a dreadlock removal, but he again said 'no, let's talk slowly when there's time to relax'.

In the heat of that afternoon, Shinya tired of apple pruning, and we went up to a cool place into the woods beside a little stream, where I explained to him all about the project so far. Being dressed for apple pruning rather than dreadlock pruning, I had with me neither scissors, nor recording equipment.

The actual cutting took place approximately 36 hours after the original comment was made. It was a somewhat ceremonial occasion, and took place on a hot evening in the living/dining room, after most people in the household had gone to bed.

After a little introductory dance,

and a discussion of technique,

Shinya approached.

Holding a piece of newspaper to catch any loose hairs, he happily cut the dreadlock very close to the root.

The lock that he cut was the second of the double-length locks that I had tied another cut lock onto. It also had a stone threaded onto it: a bead-shaped stone that I found on Worthing beach in the early 1990s. Perhaps I should have left this stone on the dreadlock, but I had an idea about a use for it, so we removed it from the dreadlock, for which it was necessary to cut the dreadlock to free the stone.

Vacuuming up the debris

Shinya knew immediately what to do with the resulting dreadlock. In the organic apple field, we had been spending a lot of time removing hoardes of hairy caterpillars from the trees. Taking the dreadlock into the orchard and tying it around a tree trunk would provide an O-mamori – talisman or good luck charm – to protect the orchard against the hairy intruders.

The choice of tree was also obvious: a power-spot tree where we had met a large contented frog and various beautiful insects as well as numerous caterpillars.

By this time, more comments - and cuts - had been made by other family members, so it was general knowledge what was occurring. Now that people at the peach farm knew, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the final cut.

Encounter 33: The Thirtieth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-11T15:30:00.000+09:00

I had not seen Naoya for about 9 years. As such, he had not seen me with dreadlocks, and I guessed correctly that my hair would be one of the first things he mentioned when I met him at the station near his apartment.

So in amongst the greetings and general reunion chit chat, I told him my spiel and handed him the scissors.

He seemed remarkably unsurprised and we chose the lock together: it was one with a wide round coloured string hanging from it, and was pretty tangled and thick at the base. Naoya cut off the lock at the root, quite happily convinced that it was the right thing to do.

Naoya initially seemed to want to keep the hair, but said that his wife would probably tell him to throw it away. We went to their apartment, and (using the lighter I had exchanged for a dreadlock the previous day) Naoya burnt around the edges of the root end of the dreadlock to clear up the loose hairs. He then put it on the sideboard near the kitchen, ready to hang up somewhere as a decoration.

After a while, Naoya's wife came home. Before either of us had a chance to explain anything to her, she saw the dreadlock on the sideboard, and exclaimed. I judged that since this was a reaction to a hair that had already been cut, and not to hair that was still attached, she was not eligible to cut another lock off. As Naoya had predicted, her opinion on the detached hair was that the best thing to do would be to throw it away. I reminded Naoya that a better thing to do would be to burn it, so the two of us went outside for a hair-burning ceremony, again using the lighter I had exchanged for the previous day's dreadlock.

It seems that densely packed tangled matted hair that may be rather damp from weeks of rainy season does not burn particularly well.

We had to use cardboard as fuel and by building up a little pyre, we managed to reduce the dreadlock to a crispy ring - something like a rough black stinking pretzel.

The remains were then broken up and disposed of down a drain. I hoped that the drain would not get blocked, but Naoya seemed to think it would be OK.

The next day, Naoya drove me into Tokyo to catch a train which would take me to a fruit farm in Fukushima.

Encounter 32: The Twenty-ninth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-10T11:00:00.000+09:00

I wandered through the less touristy streets of Asakusa, Tokyo, my dreadlocks swinging as I walked. As I passed by the entrance of ROX, a small shopping mall, I was accosted by a girl who handed me a flyer advertising a Special Campaign: a 1050 yen discount at a hair cutting salon on the 2nd floor.

I gestured to my hair, and asked if she thought I was due for a hair cut. She gave no straight answer, but then asked me if it was my real hair. So I told her all about the process I was going through, that anyone mentioning my hair would be entitled to cut one off. I handed her the scissors and asked her to choose a dreadlock.

Narabi (for that was her name) seemed relatively unfazed by the idea that I was taking off my dreadlocks, and she chose one to remove. It was one of the locks that I had tied another lock to the end of. She cut the lock close to the root, and the deed was done: one dreadlock cut, two dreadlocks lighter.

As she worked in the haircutting industry, it was natural that Narabi should want to keep the dreadlock, so I asked what she might want to exchange for it. She searched her pockets, but rapidly became convinced that she did not have anything at all.

But then she found her cigarette lighter, which seemed to be a fair swap. I remarked as we exchanged goods that the lack of lighter might help her to give up smoking.

Like many of my other cutters, I asked Narabi to write in my diary. As she did so, using a four-coloured pen that she had with her, I thought what an excellent exchange a four-coloured pen would have been for a dreadlock. But some things are not meant to be. It just goes to show how many objects people carry around, even while believing that they have nothing at all.

It was tempting to take up the opportunity offered by Narabi's flyer, and spend the money I had "earned" the previous evening on a discounted stylist haircut. For months my dreadlocks had been weighing on my shoulders as I wove my way through the world... but I was not ready to walk into a salon, spend lots of money and walk out with short hair. I knew that with 15 dreadlocks still attached to my head, there were more encounters ahead that would prove far more interesting and valuable than a quick fix.

Encounter 31: The Twenty-eighth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-09T19:30:00.000+09:00

I had arranged to meet up with my friend Joel outside a knife shop. It was a good landmark: somewhere we both remembered, and not such a place as we might not be able to find each other, such as the tourist-thronged Kaminari-mon temple gate. It also turned out that outside a knife shop was a highly appropriate place for the subsequent encounter.

Joel had just turned up when I caught the eye of one of a group of three men and one lady, obviously on their way from a business meeting to the night life of Tokyo to conduct the real business transactions. They happened to run into me, however, and so unwittingly became involved in a transaction that none of them could have anticipated.

The initial trickle of conversation gradually became a flow, and we got talking about provenance, travel, lifestyle: the usual sort of topics. It was the man in the middle of the group who came out with the comment, "Your hair is, of course, a wig, is it not?"

I told him no, and commenced with my spiel on what I was doing and how I was doing it. I included in my explanation the requirement that the lock be cut at the root. The middle man immediately took my scissors from me and aimed for the root of one of my dreadlocks.

He assumed for some reason that I only wanted one hair cut. Equivalent things had happened before. Was it so difficult to believe that I wanted a whole dreadlock cut off?

I explained persuasively that a whole dreadlock must be cut clean off, and the man suddenly became extremely reticent. "No, no," he said, "I can't do that."

I wondered if I was offering too thick a lock to be cut, and found something smaller and thinner, but still the man could not do the deed. He passed the scissors to the bald man on his left.

The bald man joyfully took the scissors, snipped clean through the smaller dreadlock very near the root, and proceeded to adorn his own head with his new-found hair.

He most certainly wanted to keep the lock, so I asked what he might want to exchange for it. He immediately produced a crisp new 5000 yen note.

My initial thought was that money was not allowed as an exchange item in this project (Guerrero Marquez had been of the same opinion) so I refused. The man then offered me his business card, but I did not immediately think of this as a fair exchange for the 9 years it took me to grow my dreadlocks. Thinking about this in retrospect, the bald man probably took far longer than 9 years to get to the high position of respectability that appeared on his card. So perhaps it would have been a fair swap after all. It was probably very disrespectful of me not to accept his business card, but since I was giving him (and everyone else I met) my own business card, I wanted something more appropriate, in exchange for the dreadlock itself. At last, he offered me an ultimatum: take the card or the 5000 yen. Offered this choice, what could I do but accept the money?

I realized that at some point I would be able to purchase with it something highly relevant to my cause: something like a head massage - to undo all the scalpal stress of 9 years of dreadlocks - or a hair clipper.

The bald man's colleagues looked on at this bargaining, and I believe we all left feeling much the richer for this uncommon and unique exchange in an appropriate place.

Resisting temptation the following morning, I kept the 5000 yen note in my bag of swapped objects, and eventually purchased a portable battery-powered hair clipper with which I can now keep my scalp nicely trimmed, for the purposes of website construction, and surprising family members.

Encounter 30: The Twenty-seventh Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-09T12:30:00.000+09:00

I was waiting near the Kaminari-mon in Asakusa, surrounded by the groups of tourists who frequent that place, when suddenly I noticed a man from one of the groups walking towards me, pointing his camera at me. I tried to ask him why he wanted to take a photo of me, but he spoke neither Japanese nor English.

As he and his family lined up for a photo with me, his daughter explained that her sister liked hippies. I feigned mild offence, and asked if she was calling me a hippie. At this point, the girl mentioned my dreadlocks, thus setting the process officially in motion. I thanked her in English, and explained that my hair was gradually being removed by people who took an interest in it. Since there was a family involved, I selected a lock that split into 3 ends, and invited the girl to remove it using the scissors that I also gave her. Having cut the lock, she naturally wanted to keep it to give to her sister, so I asked what she might want to exchange for it. Her father gave her a warning glance, as if to say "that's not worth anything!" but then the girl had the idea of allowing me to cut off a lock of her own hair in exchange.

It was then her mother's turn to get worried - about her having bits of her hair cut off - but the girl insisted it was OK, and asked me to proceed. So it was my turn to step into the position of the cutter. I came to understand the feeling that most of my cutters seem to have - I don't want to cut off too much of your hair...

Apart from my Japanese Visa application, the scissors had not been used for anything except cutting my own hair. The girl was grateful for the exchange, as she had a nice big dreadlock to take home to her hippie enthusiast sister, and I had a lock of another person's hair to add to my collection of strange objects.

The next Encounter took place nearby, seven hours later.

Encounter 29: The Twenty-sixth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-09T00:00:00.000+09:00

I don't usually go to bars. I don't drink or smoke, and a small dark room with loud music never seems conducive to the sort of small-group conversation I love to engage in. However, when clearing one's head, one has to be open to all sorts of experiences.

It was not a big decision to go out to the bar in Asakusa with Joel and Chris. For one thing, attempting to fit in with a social "norm" would be a pleasant break from my usual routine. Furthermore, such an experience would be naturally weighted towards the possibility that somebody would take at least a passing interest in the length or form of my hair, and this was the only trigger which would start the process by which the next of my dreadlocks would be removed.

Was I becoming a leech on society? Was every move I made calculated to be conducive to the next hit? Perhaps. But unlike a standard form of addiction, this series of hits had a clear end: when there are no more dreadlocks left, there are no more hits to be had - unless I spend another 9 years growing the things.

Joel and Chris were both familiar with my dreadlock removal process, and therefore knew not to mention them. None of the other people with whom we walked from the hostel to the bar mentioned my hair. Perhaps they all felt either not familiar enough with me to feel comfortable with asking about dreadlocks, or familiar enough with the idea of dreadlocks that they didn't feel the need to ask. (Why should they ask anyway?)

The bar was small enough that almost everyone got talking, at some point, to almost everyone else. It was also small enough that after one person set off the dreadlock removal process by mentioning my dreadlocks, everyone else in the bar would notice, and thereby become ineligible to partake in a further removal, by dint of already knowing what was going on.

The person who eventually mentioned my dreadlocks was Deanna, an American girl studying Japanese in Tokyo. Fairly early in the conversation she came straight out with the question of how long I'd been growing them. Deanna was particularly interested in dreads, having a dreadlocked sibling, but she had never got around to growing her own because of the high maintenance involved. I set about my standard explanation of the project I was undertaking. Deanna seemed pretty surprised, but willing to go ahead with the cut.

After gratefully receiving the dreadlock, saying that she would give it to her sibling, Deanna decided that the best thing to exchange for it would be the Japanese o-mamori that was tied on her bag. It had brought her luck, she said, and she hoped it would bring me as much luck.

The link between dreadlock and o-mamori seems to be rather persistent. It there something deeply psychological linking locks of hair to protection charms, or is it just chance that there keeps being such a crossover?

The next dreadlock to be cut was also kept to give to the cutter's sister.

Encounter 28: The Twenty-fifth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-08T19:30:00.000+09:00

Once again, I found myself waiting for some friends next to the Kaminari-mon. A man approached from my left, speaking in English. I replied in Japanese, and he started asking me all sorts of things.

His first question to me was, "Are you travelling around the world?" I told him that indeed I was, but he did not believe that I had come from England by train and boat. When I detailed the journey I had made, and listed the places I had been, however, he realized I was not joking. He then asked if I had grown my hair since I had started travelling. I thanked him for noticing my hair, and told him my spiel, explaining what I was doing, and I pointed out that it had taken me 9 years to grow my hair. He did not seem to take much persuading, and selected a dreadlock that I had plaited together from 3 separate ones. When he had cut it off, I asked him what should be done with it.

He was very clear about this: "Why, you should keep it to give to someone!"
"Who?"
"Give it to your girlfriend as a keepsake!"

The man's female companion agreed that this was probably the best idea, but at the time I did not have a girlfriend, so I started to wonder what this could mean for this dreadlock. I considered that if I were to give it to any new or prospective girl or lady friend who I might encounter, this might be considered rather strange or inappropriate, especially if such an encounter were to occur after my head had returned to a short-haired or shaven state. Such a prospective lady friend may well not see me as a person with dreadlocks: this part of my history would be strange or unknown to her, and to give her some hair of mine from years ago might seem strange or even needlessly nostalgic. But I have an idea of who to give the lock to: should she accept it, I would give it to a lady friend who did share some of my dreadlocked history.

For the time being, it was time to move on to the next Encounter.

Encounter 27: The Twenty-fourth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-08T16:30:00.000+09:00

As I looked for the right seat on the train, I heard a voice: "We meet again!"

I had to look twice, as I was not immediately sure where I had seen him before, but I then realized he must have been one of the people with a group of Americans I'd met earlier. I surmised that it would make for an interesting journey to have some company, and I made the acquaintance of the guy who had spoken, Guerrero Marquez, a Filipino expat from near Tokyo.

After we had talked for a while, and exchanged life stories and raisons d'être, Guerrero said, as if he had been holding the question in, "I have to ask, is it your real hair?" I told him the situation, and he was immediately interested in what I had to say, and somewhat surprised at what I was undertaking. He certainly agreed to cut one off, but couldn't quite believe that that is what I wanted him to do.

But then he accepted, and with an air of determination he reached up and chose a lock to cut.

After the cut, Guerrero was keen to keep the dreadlock and I asked what he wanted to exchange for it. He said that he assumed that money is not an option, and rummaged in his wallet to see what else he could find.

From his wallet, he produced a Catholic talisman featuring a medallion embedded into a handy credit-card sized package bearing the image of Our Lady of Fatima. He told me that his mother had given it to him. This seemed to be somewhat precious, so I asked if it was really alright to take it from him. He insisted it was, and I accepted it. The Japanese word for a talisman is o-mamori, and I thought it highly appropriate that here was a dreadlock being exchanged for an o-mamori when one of my previously removed dreadlocks had been installed as an o-mamori hanging from the ceiling of a bar in Kamakura. I asked Guerrero to keep the dreadlock he removed as an o-mamori.

The train took us back to Tokyo, and we went our separate ways. Later that evening, after another removal at the Kaminarimon, I underwent another exchange of talisman-for-dreadlock.

Encounter 26: The Twenty-third Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-08T13:00:00.000+09:00

I was wandering between shrines, through Nikko's tall dark forest along gravel paths pre-defined for tourists, when an exclamation to my right suggested that a lady had just seen a foreigner with extremely long dreadlocks. I realized that she too was a foreigner, and spoke neither Japanese nor English. She and her family were clearly talking about my hair, but I could not understand their language. The daughter spoke English and told me that they were from Taiwan.

A short way into our conversation, she asked me directly if this was my real hair. I started my spiel in Japanese, and then realized that English would be understood better. When I offered the scissors, the girl joyfully took them and selected and cut off a dreadlock.

She handed me the dreadlock and asked what we should do with it. She seemed to want to keep it, so I asked if there was anything she would like to exchange for it. At this point her father or grandfather intervened from behind her, shaking his head as if to say "no, you don't want that, it's not worth anything."
So the girl gave the lock back to me and I asked what I should do with it. The girl told me to keep it, but I suggested that a better idea might be to put it somewhere... like...

How about in this gap between stones in this stone wall... does it look like there's some kind of creature lurking in there?

I thanked the family, and continued on my way. They were heading the same way, and the conversation continued, as we wandered along the avenue, with profuse laughter and hearty recommendations that I should visit Taiwan, not to mention concern that I was travelling alone without my family.

Rather than visiting Taiwan, I got on a train to return to Tokyo.

Encounter 25: The Twenty-second Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-08T12:30:00.000+09:00

I saw the opening and seized it immediately. A group of old ladies were sitting having a rest on the plastic benches near the entrance to one of the many shrines in Nikko. On the premise that I too felt like I needed a rest (and secretly hoping that some mention would be made of my dreadlocks), I excused myself and sat down next to two of them.

We got talking , and fairly early in the conversation the lady next to me mentioned my dreadlocks. I explained to her what I was doing, that by mentioning my dreadlocks she was eligible to cut one off, and handed her the scissors.

She immediately said that she couldn't possibly cut any of my hair, as it would be such a waste of the time I had taken to grow it. Thus began a test of my powers of persuasion.

Will she?

Won't she?

By explaining how heavy my hair had been getting, and how hot it is in the summer heat, and how my body was telling me 切る時間です！"it's time to cut it!" (a phrase which her friend repeated, giggling), I managed to convince both ladies that it was indeed, time to cut off another dreadlock. They noticed the evidence that other dreadlocks had been cut off, and tentatively agreed to do the deed.

snip, snip!

The ladies seemed contented with the deed, but they still had concerns: what would I do with the dreadlock now that it was cut off? The lady who did the cutting particularly wanted me to keep the lock and do something with it: her immediate suggestion was that I use it as the hair for some sort of doll or figurine.

They also suggested that I tie my hair back to look less scary, and perhaps shave my beard off. I promised them that I would shave at or before the end of the dreadlock cutting process.

We continued to talk for a few minutes, and I thinked them profusely before making my excuses and heading off to look for something to use as a doll's head.

It was not until after the next encounter that I found a stone which would do nicely.

I spent some time entwining my dreadlock around it, made eyes from mud, and a mouth from a thin yellow leaf.

I knew that this "doll" would be ephemeral, but as I left it on the mossy wall and walked off down the path, I hoped that perhaps the lady who had commissioned it would walk past it and notice it before it disintegrated and returned to the forest.

Encounter 24: The Twenty-first Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-07T10:12:00.000+09:00

After two dreadlock removals in quick succession, I started packing up my backpack, ready to move on to the next place. Another group of tourists appeared from along the lake. One lady responded to my cheery greeting and asked me the usual sort of questions. Another lady came and joined her and was informed about how wonderful it was that I had come all the way from England. A third lady came along and it was she who made a passing comment about my hair.

The Gathering Crowd

I got my scissors out of my pocket, and told her what I wanted her to do.

She was a little surprised, but seemed interested in cutting off a dreadlock.

However, when I asked her to cut it off from the root, she suddenly insisted that she couldn't cut it.

I begged and pleaded with her, and when I knelt down and proffered her a root to cut, she finally relented, and did the deed, taking two cuts of the scissors to get through the dreadlock.

When I asked the lady what to do with the dreadlock, she immediately said, "I don't need it!" I think it was one of her friends who suggested that I hang it from the entrance of the nearby pier. This seemed to be a very good idea. Being on a strict timetable, the tour group suddenly had to leave, so I turned and went to the pier entrance where I tied the dreadlock onto a diagonal loop at the corner of the structure.

There, as far as I know, it still hangs, fluttering slightly in the breeze.

I left the lake, and traveled on in search of the next opportunity for dreadlock removal.

Encounters 22 and 23: The Ninteenth and Twentieth Dreadlock Removals

2010-07-07T09:30:00.000+09:00

I was looking for a litter bin on the shore of a touristic lake in the mountains near Nikko, Japan, but there were no litter bins around. Perturbed, I asked a man attending a pleasure boat dock if there was anywhere to put my rubbish. He agreed that there were no rubbish bins around, but said he was happy to take my rubbish from me and burn it. Which he did. Our encounter became a conversation, and he came around to asking me about my hair. Were my dreadlocks, he wanted to know, extensions? No, I told him: they are all real. I thanked him for mentioning my hair, and was just about to explain what I was doing when he saw a group of tourists across the road and excused himself, as he had to show them to the boats. By and by, he came back from his duties and we continued our conversation. I told him that I was having my dreadlocks gradually removed by anyone who took an interest in them.

He was somewhat reticent to take the scissors, but I insisted and we chose a lock towards the back of my head. He assumed that I was just removing dreadlocks that could not be seen: it turned out that he was a trainee hairdresser and he made an effort to cut the lock in such a way as to fit in with the rest of my hair.

The glee with which this man cut my hair was balanced by a professional flair that few others matched. When I asked what should be done with the lock, his semi-professional advice was to tie it on to the end of another dreadlock, and that is what I did.

The group of tourists came back from their boat trip, and wandered off the pier, passing by where I was seated tying the newly cut dreadlock onto one that was still attached.

Being a long-haired foreigner, I suddenly became less tourist and more tourist attraction. The passers-by plied me with comments and questions, and one man who walked by leaning heavily on a stick described me as beautiful.

Rather taken aback, I asked him why he thought so, and he mentioned that it was my hair that he thought was beautiful. So I told him my spiel, offering my scissors, and it was his turn to be taken aback.

He agreed to cut off a lock with his free hand and I made sure he knew to cut the hair at the root. At this, the ladies standing around said, "No! You can't do that!!"

But he did.

The man then handed me the lock, and walked off with the rest of the group, leaving me no time to ask what should be done with the resulting lock. He obviously had not found my hair quite beautiful enough to want to keep the part he had removed. I decided to treat this lock the same as the previous one and tie it onto the end of one of the locks that was still attached. So I was two dreadlocks closer to physical removal, but the combined weight of hair was no lighter.

(Please click here to find out what happened to the first extended dreadlock, and here to find out what happened to the second extended dreadlock)

Two locks dangling

Before I could leave the lake, I was attracting more tourists.

Encounter 21: The Eighteenth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-05T12:00:00.000+09:00

I saw Joel in the distance, walking past a willow tree, and yelled to him from the kaminari-mon gate where I was waiting. He and Chris headed over to me, both glad I had waited for them.

I had not seen Joel since leaving Beijing, and although I had hinted to him that I may have plans for hair removal, I did not reveal to him the details of the project. So when, under the Kaminari gate, he said to me "You've still got all your hair!" he became eligible to cut off one of my dreadlocks. I told him of his eligibility, and of the general details of my project, and he cut off the lock that I recommended, one with a loop in the end which protruded from in front of my right ear.

He decided to tie it to his rucksack while he thought about what to do with it.

Chris was unfortunately not eligible to cut a lock, because he had found out about this project when Joel mentioned my hair.

We had arranged to go on a journey to the Nikko area north of Tokyo, and climb a holy mountain called Nantai-san. On the way up the mountain, we passed a shrine building bound with a rice-straw rope, and I mentioned to Joel and Chris that I had considered and made use of the similarity between rice straw rope and dreadlock. Joel said, "Why don't we hang this one here?!" So we found a space between two ricestraw strings, and Joel tied the dreadlock in the space, where it was a perfect length and colour to fit in with the other rice straw strings.

It wasn't until Joel and Chris had left and gone back to Tokyo that I had any more encounters.

Encounter 20: The Seventeenth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-05T11:00:00.000+09:00

I was waiting for friends in front of the Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate), fanning myself in the heat of the morning, when there appeared to my right, a short weathered-looking man, who announced himself in Japanese as homeless: he had been so for about five years. He took my fan from me, and took over the fanning.

As he fanned me, he talked to me, telling me how difficult it was to be hungry when no-one gave him any food. So I got a dorayaki - a bean jam cake - out from my food bag and gave it to him. He started to eat it very thankfully, and suggested we go and sit under the gate where it was cooler in the shade. I told him my friends were already an hour overdue, and he said he thought they probably wouldn't turn up. We chatted about various things: his life living under a nearby bridge, the times I had spent in Japan, the fact that from the pattern of the clouds we could see that it would probably rain today, and the various frequencies of tourists: Japanese, other Asians, Westerners, and Aren't-there-a-lot-of-Americans-around-these-days?
At some point, the man asked me a direct question about my hair: something like how long had I been growing it? So I did my spiel and passed him the scissors, and he agreed without much persuasion to cut one off.

During and after the cut, a lot of passers-by seemed to stare. I wondered if more people might come and mention my hair, but they seemed to treat it more as a spectacle not to get involved in. What must they have thought? That a homeless man had set up a hairdressing salon right there under the Kaminari Gate?

Upon the removal of the dreadlock, the homeless man first said that he would keep it as a keepsake (kinenhin). But later in the conversation, he said that he would go and tie it to the omikuji rack along the street at the temple, Sensouji. Omikuji are the fortune papers that visitors buy at the temple. Having read one's fortune, it is the custom to tie these papers to a rack (or at some temples to trees) and it was this rack that we agreed it would be a good idea to tie the dreadlock to. Since the cutter was not planning to keep the dreadlock, and since he was, after all homeless, and looking for support, I did not feel right asking for something in exchange for the dreadlock. In a way, it was as if this was an exchange in reverse: I paid him in dorayaki to cut my dreadlock off.

By and by, my new homeless friend left me to wait for my friends, and wandered off down the street towards Sensoji, saying that he would tie the lock to the omikuji rack. It seems that the rack is cleared of fortune papers daily, and since I did not go to Sensoji until a few days later, I never found out whether the dreadlock was tied to the rack. I wonder where it ended up.

Encounter 19: The Sixteenth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-04T19:00:00.000+09:00

I was wandering the streets of Kamakura looking for somewhere to wash my clothes and somewhere to sleep. I passed a bar with music playing and went in to ask where I could find a coin laundry. There were two guys hanging out there but no customers. They were unable to tell me a direct "no, there is no coin laundry" as that concept is almost impossible to express in polite Japanese, but when I said, "I guess it looks like there is none," they agreed. I was just about to leave when the guy behind the bar said, "you have nice dreads."

I told them my spiel, and after I quashed their suspicions that I only wanted half a dreadlock cut off, they agreed to cut off a whole one. Appropriately, they selected one dreadlock with two prongs, and cut it off nice and close to the root.

They definitely wanted to keep the lock to have at the bar, so I asked what they would exchange it for. They really were not sure, but looked around the bar, as I told them anything would do. They eventually settled on a small soy sauce dish.

As one of the guys handed it to me, he told me "Koreha Very Old, desu yo" and explained that it was from the Edo period. I felt this was rather a generous swap, but realized they had swapped a precious object for a story to tell. Objects may not be interesting in and of themselves, but when there is a story attached to them, their percieved value increases no end. I thanked them profusely and went on my way, still carrying my bag of dirty clothes and my bag of strange objects that was filling up little by little.

The following encounter was the only one in which the object was not something I gained in return for a dreadlock, but something I gave in return for having the dreadlock cut off.

Encounter 18: The Fifteenth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-04T14:00:00.000+09:00

I was putting my boots on, getting ready to leave a bath house at which no-one I met had mentioned my dreadlocks. I spent a while chatting to the ladies at the reception, and during this time a gentleman to whom I had been chatting in the bath came out of the changing room. None of these people mentioned my dreadlocks, but the gentleman did ask if I fancied a beer. I told him that alcohol was not my preference, but he insisted I join him anyway at the establishment over the road where he always goes for a beer after his bath.
For some unfathomable reason, the place was called Bar Jerk. I accepted the kind offer of a grapefruit juice, and we got talking to the barman-proprietor, whose name is Takashi Fuji.

After we had covered the usual preliminary conversation topics, Takashi came out with the comment, "your hair's very long isn't it?" I thanked him profusely for this comment, stood up, and explained my spiel. If he was at all surprised, this very quickly turned into deep interest.

Takashi took the scissors, came around the bar, and went ahead and cut off one of my dreadlocks with just the right mixture of panache and formality.

It was immediately obvious to him what to do with the hair: use it as an o-mamori, a protective lucky charm or talisman to hang in the bar. He spent some time winding it into an appropriate shape and selecting the appropriate place to hang it from the ceiling.

There was a real sense during this exchange of everyone being in the right place at the right time, having accidentally come together for this special event. We all wished each other well and went our separate ways. I decided that central Kamakura was a likely place for someone to mention my dreadlocks, and thereby initiate another encounter.

Encounter 17: The Fourteenth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-04T08:00:00.000+09:00

Having been enviously watching surfers as I walked along the beach between Kamakura and Enoshima, I popped into a 7-11 to find out exactly where I was by looking at a map. On my way out past the drinks shelves, I heard a voice nearby whisper "Rasta". I confronted the owner of the voice, a surfer and said to him "to iu no ha?" which is essentially the Japanese equivalent of "Yeah? And?" I felt more aggressive than I had meant to feel, and had somehow not managed to capture the subtler "please say whay you actually want to say" nuance that I had been after. All I wanted to do was elicit a response clear enough to know for sure that he had been talking about my hair all along. I felt that he was on the defensive and wanting not to risk my (nonexistent) wrath. Realizing that I had probably scared him (being, as I am, an unpredictable foreigner) and also that it was obvious enough that he was talking about my hair, I asked him straight: "do you mean my hair?" He said yes, and I handed him the scissors while telling him the whole spiel. He was far too shocked to cut off my hair there and then, so I took the scissors back and said the equivalent of "I'll see you outside."

I am convinced that this did not sound as aggressive as it would do in English. From my actions it may have been inferred that I was starting a fight. The possible ambiguosity of my motives as perceived by my audience is another reason I chose Japan for this undertaking. Had I led a similar path in a rough city somewhere in Europe or the USA, I may well have ended up on the wrong side of a frightened victim-become-attacker. The smaller likelihood of "trouble" in Japan makes it an attractive location for on-the-hoof performance intervention.

Luckily for me (and for the angry fight-starter I could have been) convenience stores have only one door, so I knew I would not miss my participant coming out through it, and had a minute or two to set the camera up.

He seemed surprised that I wanted the whole length of dreadlock cut off ("Half is OK, isn't it?") but then got good and close with the scissors, and cut the lock well and cleanly.

He definitely had no interest in keeping the lock, so I asked him what I should do with it. He said "beach" (as in "put it on the") and ran off, as his friends were calling him to the car.

I went down to the beach with my small handy backpack trowel, myself, and the newly-detached dreadlock, and dug a hole.

I only got about 2 or 3 inches deep, so I expect that a couple of days later the sea or a person or a dog would come along and unbury the dreadlock. Perhaps, I mused, as I walked back up to the road, this would cause some alarm to the local surfers, and lead to a forensic investigation into human remains buried next to the sea. But I heard nothing of this, and it is highly unlikely. For a day or two, at any rate, one of my dreadlocks was buried on a popular surfing beach in Kamakura.

On to the next Encounter.

Encounter 16: The Thirteenth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-03T21:00:00.000+09:00

I sat on a bench by the bridge, eating peanuts for supper, watching as the stream of people leaving a rock festival flowed along the road and back over the bridge to the mainland. Many of the passers-by stared or glanced at me, some gave me a convivial "otsukare," assuming that I had been with them at the festival, but it took a long time before any of them mentioned my dreadlocks. Why, after all, should they mention my dreadlocks? Hairstyles like this are not so uncommon in such circles.

The one person who took more that a passing interest said something along the lines of "I like" as he wandered past. I asked him what exactly he liked, and he revealed that he was, indeed, referring to my dreadlocks. He did not expect what happened next, which was that I produced my scissors and asked him to cut one off. He seemed fairly happy to take the scissors and make the cut.

The guy also seemed happy to keep the dreadlock. When I asked him for something in exchange, he went into the standard mindset of believing that he did not have anything with him. I think he really believed this. In my experience, the majority of people carry clutter around with them and have no idea that they are doing so.

He was holding a bottle, and I said anything is OK, even an empty bottle. Then his friends noticed that he had around his neck a black and yellow towel featuring the name of one of the bands that had been playing. This seemed to both of us to be rather a good exchange, so I came into posession of a sweaty towel, with "Yama Arashi" emblazoned on it in Japanese and English.

The boy danced off, dangling the dreadlock from his head. He was pretty hyper. It would not surprise me if he lost the dreadlock on his way home.

On to the next encounter.

Encounter 15: The Third Refusal

2010-07-03T20:00:00.000+09:00

As I rounded the more touristy section of the island on my way back from the windy cape, there was still a rather a buzz in the air. I walked along the seafront past the shops which were doing a roaring trade with the people going to and from a music festival along by the harbour. A lady dressed in black said something along the lines of "long hair" as I passed by, so I stopped to thank her, and presented my usual spiel. Despite taking hold of the scissors, the and her daughter were very convinced that to cut any of my dreadlocks off would be "mottainai" - a terrible waste.

I told her that I had already had 12 removed in this way, and she would be doing me a favour, since I hoped to get rid of my dreadlocks as soon as possible using this method. I begged her - I even got down on my knees as I proffered my dreadlock, and she got as far as brandishing the scissors...

...but they both finally refused, giving the excuse that, "we don't do that in Japanese culture."

The ladies were not convinced.

Of course you don't, I thought: we don't do that in any culture! This is about going beyond boundaries of what is thought of as regular human cultural behaviour and seeing what happens if we do things in a different way.

Before we parted, the ladies asked me *why* I was having other people cut my dreadlocks off for me. I almost said "because I can't bring myself to cut them off," and while there may be a certain truth in that, there is a deeper reason to do this act by proxy, some of which I explained to these ladies: this is a more social method. It gets people involved, and widens the effect of the haircut. Many stories will come out of these encounters, and stories are what we humans thrive on.

I gave up on the ladies who refused, and went off to sit on a bench, past which a flow of people wandered back to the mainland.

Please Click Here to view the following encounter.

Encounter 14: Twelfth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-03T18:00:00.000+09:00

I saw the youngish couple sitting on some steps below me as I approached from between two trees near the summit of the island. The boy - who I later learned was called Haruo - looked up and said some thing along the lines of, "long hair" or "nice dreads". I surprised him and myself by speaking in somewhat formal, well-rehearsed Japanese, "Thank you for saying so. Why should I thank you? Well, starting the other day, anyone who is kind enough to speak of my dreadlocks is invited to cut one off."

And I took my scissors out of my pocket and handed them to him.

Haruo seemed interested in my story and keen to take part in the exercise.

He cut off one of my dreadlocks near the roots, and I asked him what he thought we should do with it.

He quickly came up with the idea of decorating something with it. I noticed that one of the trees I had walked past had large exposed roots, and suggested that it would be good to adorn such a tree with a dreadlock that had been cut near the roots.

So Haruo tied the dreadlock to one of the branches, and there, as far as I know, it remains.

I continued to wander around the island, and had still not left when the next encounter occurred.

Encounter 13: The Eleventh Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-03T13:00:00.000+09:00

I was standing in front of a souvenir sweet shop watching a machine making little bean-jam cakes. I made appreciative noises to a bored-looking male shop assistant, but he took little notice. A wizened female shop assistant approached from further inside the shop, and with eyes sparkling, said in Japanized English, "Long Hair!"

I produced my scissors and started to explain my hair-cutting intentions to the lady, but she seemed to understand what was going on as soon as she saw the scissors.

I asked her to choose a dreadlock to cut, and she did so, but made the common error of starting to cut at the tip, rather than the root. I never quite understood what people thought might be the point of cutting just a small bit of hair off the end of the dreadlocks. To cut it all this way would take as long as it had taken to grow, by which time I would be 9 years older, and my hair would be twice the length! Perhaps people simply assumed that such a mass of hair must be an important object which I felt the need to keep. So I offered her the root of her selected dreadlock, and she took a snip and a half to cut through the tangled mass.

The sparkle-eyed lady seemed rather pleased to have assisted me in my quest, but immediately said she had no use for the dreadlock and gave it back to me.

When I asked her what to do with it, she advised me to "keep it in a safe place," and I walked away wondering how to interpret this.

I sat on a bench and twisted the dreadlock into a ring or bracelet.

I decided not to wear this openly for fear that somebody might comment on the removed dreadlock and complicate the matter by raising the question of whether the encounter-triggering comment had to be about a dreadlock that was still attached to my head.

A few hours later, I had travelled, on a whim (and also on a train), to Enoshima, another touristic spot, on the south coast of Kanagawa prefecture. Walking up the island through the shrine complex, I suddenly saw what I had to do with the dreadlock ring.

In front of one of the shrine buildings was a huge ring of rice straw that visitors were invited to walk through in a figure of eight pattern.

The resemblance of this ring to the dreadlocked ring in my pocket was uncanny, and proved beyond doubt the value of whimsical train travel.

Between the large ring and its supporting frame was a cleft just big enough to fit the dreadlock ring.

So I placed it there.

I then continued walking, and approached the island's summit.

Encounters 11 and 12: In The Tatami Room

2010-07-02T19:00:00.000+09:00

Encounter 11: The Second Refusal

Many of the larger family-oriented hot springs and bath-houses in all parts of Japan have one or more large multi-purpose tatami rooms where it is possible to order food and drinks, eat one's own food, or simply relax after a hot soak. I usually use such places to drink Pocari Sweat and to catch up with my diary.

After emerging from the bath at Hakone-no-yu onsen, I had been given some left-over food by a group of ladies on the other side of the room and was writing my diary entry about my productive time in the bath talking to the man who took a dreadlock without exchanging it for anything when a lady came in to clean the tables. As she wiped the far end of the table at which I was seated, she made a passing comment about my hair, either saying that it was very long, or how bothersome it must be.

I presented to her my spiel about what I was doing and explained why she was suddenly an unwitting participant in a performance project.

Her general attutude was that of refusal, saying what a waste it would be of all that lovely long hair, although she did go as far as taking the scissors and starting to choose a dreadlock to remove.

Just before making the cut, however, she said that she would call the others (which others, I wondered) and come back.

She left me on tenterhooks, in a state of gradually diminishing expectation. And that was as far as the second non-removal went.

Encounter 12: The Tenth Removal

I had been given more food than I could eat. I returned the large collection of almost-empty food boxes to the table on the other side of the room with a note to say thank you to the three ladies who had given me the food. Two ladies and two young children had occupied the next table over while I was eating. Realizing that my actions may look rather odd, I explained to them that I had been given lots of food. Amazed that I could speak Japanese, they started plying me with questions. While we were chatting, the first group of three ladies returned, and, finding my thank-you note, expressed amazement that I could write Japanese as well as speaking it. (The cultural myth of the impossibility of Japanese is a myth that is held dear in the hearts of those who speak it as a mother-tongue.)

Between the two groups, I was being hit with a barrage of questions from both sides. I realized that a mention of my hair could not be far off, and began to wonder which group would be the first. It turned out to be the most local and most talkative lady of all, the older of the two ladies accompanying the two children. As I explained my project, she seemed fairly calm, although she was surprised when she realized that I wanted a whole dreadlock cut off. As there were a few people in the group, I selected for them a nice big thick multiple, formed of about 4 or so dreadlocks fused together. With only two snips, the deed was done, and my head was further cleared.

The lady wanted me to keep the lock as a 記念品 kinenhin or memento of the occasion, but I told her I already had plenty of dreadlocks and plenty more memories. At which she immediately expressed her own wish to keep the lock as a 記念品 kinenhin. This was fine by me, and when I asked what she would swap for it, she came up with the perfect exchange: a bottle of shampoo.

None but the purest non-additive shampoo had graced my dreadlocked scalp for 9 years, so this was a perfect exchange: a reintroduction to shampoo. My one concern with the shampoo bottle was that it might be rather heavy to carry around. But since I had just got rid of the single largest clump of hair on my head, I was not too worried about an extra weight.

The next encounter took place the following day.

Encounter 10: The Ninth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-02T16:30:00.000+09:00

I was sitting naked in a pool of hot water, when a Japanese man approached me and spoke to me in English. After asking me the usual questions [Where are you from? What do you think of Japan? Do you have a girlfriend? etc.] and after I had made it clear that I could understand Japanese, he asked [地毛ですね? jige, desu ne~?] It is your real hair, isn't it? Indeed it was my real hair, so I told him my spiel and explained all about it, and we came to a tentative agreement that he would cut one off after we had both finished in the bath. After a few more snippets of conversation, we went our separate bathing ways, but I kept an eye on him lest he slip away unnoticed before relieving me of another lock.

I need not have worried: before he left, he passed near to the bath I was in and hinted that he was maybe nearly ready to think about leaving. So I went out to the changing room and got ready for a haircut.

I noticed Mr. M. about to leave, and called to him. He came to my locker, asking [本当ですか？honto desuka?] - is it really true that you want me to cut off a dreadlock? I think he thought I'd been joking with him. He was even more surprised when I made sure he cut a whole dreadlock off. I think perhaps he thought that just one hair would suffice (at that rate, this activity would of course take rather more than a couple of months to achieve). He may have tried to persuade me not to do it, but I was determined, and he acquiesced.

After he cut the dreadlock free, Mr. M. was almost certainly expecting to keep it. I asked him if he had anything to exchange for it, but he said that since he only came down from his hotel to have a bath, he didn't have anything with him. But he took the dreadlock away with him anyway. I was not too worried though, as he had actually made the cut (unlike the lady in the previous encounter) and I went to the tatami room to write my diary.

Encounter 9: The First Refusal

2010-07-02T13:30:00.000+09:00

A brush with an unknown religion

Walking along a road in the Hakone area, I happened upon a large temple complex with barbed wire along its walls.

At the grand temple entrance gate were two signs , one in Japanese saying 信者の方々はどうぞお入り下さい "Believers, please come in" and one in English saying "I'm afraid you cannot enter here".

I wondered at this dichotomy. It is interesting that anyone who does not read Japanese is fundamentally assumed to be a non-believer. What of those of us who can read English and Japanese? Which sign should we believe?

I went towards the gate to get a closer look and a photograph, and asked a lady who was standing there what the dichotomy was all about. She explained that since the complex was an "otera" (temple) and not a mere "jinja" (shrine), only adherants of this particular sect could come and worship there. I had never heard of this differentiation before, but I told her if that was the case, I would just look from the outside. She interpreted this to mean "please can I have a quick look inside" and after a quick nod of agreement from another lady, let me in for a quick look.

Inside was a courtyard filled with garish statues and buildings of opulence. Clearly this was a sect of some power with many followers.

I went back outside thanking the ladies, and met another lady who had just parked her car across the road. As I approached, she asked if I adhered to any religion, with an insinuation that my hair was rather long. I leapt at the chance for another dreadlock encounter, and elicited a more concrete hair-related comment. But when I proffered her the scissors, she gave me a typical Japanese smile-that-means-no, and refused point-blank to cut any of my hair.

I pleaded, but she said no - it couldn't be just one. I asked what she would do if I asked her to cut off the whole lot, and she advised me to go to a hairdresser.

I asked again if she wouldn't just make one little snip.

"What will you do with the hair when it's off?"

- We'll have to decide that together after you cut it.

"Of course," she said, "it'll have to go in the rubbish."

It seems that if the hair is on my head it is impressive, and if not, then it's rubbish. (why is the hair on the head not just as rubbish as the detached hair?)

Her final excuse was that she couldn't cut the hair here, in front of the temple, and she couldn't come and and cut it elsewhere because she had to work.

So that was that.

We said our farewells, and I left the temple having neither lightened my head nor enlightened my spirit.

Perhaps, I thought, I would find more enlightenment if I went for an onsen.

Encounter 8: The Eighth Dreadlock Removal

2010-07-01T17:30:00.000+09:00

Being in Atsugi was getting on my nerves. It felt too urban: there was not enough human interaction to ensure a steady stream of dreadlock-removing encounters. I was just about ready to give up and head back to the hills, when I decided to go into the cheapest noodle shop in town for a bowl of soba. As I ordered, trying to make the decision between kitsune and tempura, I got chatting with the lady serving the noodles. She asked me why I spoke Japanese, where I had travelled, and then suddenly speaking in English, she said the words, "nice hairstyle!"

At this, I leapt joyfully into my spiel, and revealed to her that she was now entitled to cut off one of my dreadlocks. She was slightly taken aback, but was happy - when she had a moment - to come out from the kitchen to cut off a dreadlock.

She chose one from just above my left ear.

It was somewhat entangled with other dreadlocks, so took a couple of snips and not a little concentration, but was soon free, and my head a little lighter.

When I asked the soba lady what to do with the lock, she seemed to want to keep it as a 記念品 kinenhin - a memento of the encounter, but when I asked what she would like to exchange for it, she became less sure. So she went back behind the counter to think about it while I ate my kitsune soba.

After eating, I took my tray back to the counter, and asked the lady what we should do with the lock. She completely changed her tune and announced that as a preparer of food, she could not accept a dreadlock, and I should keep it. As for what to do with it, she said, "I'll leave that up to you."

If one party is less willing to partake in an exchange, does this become a form of abuse? Especially in a culture like Japan where it is almost impossible to voice a direct opinion such as "please go away and leave me alone". It seems that at first, people quite like the idea of keeping a dreadlock as a memento or keepsake, but when given the time to think about it, no longer seem to want it - especially if they have to attach a value to it by exchanging something for it.

I decided that since the lady who cut this dreadlock was wearing glasses, I would tie it into the shape of a pair of glasses. So I went outside and did so.

I did not wear these glasses much, partly because they were rather itchy, and partly because they might inspire comments about a hair that was no longer attached to me, thus complicating the issue of whether a prospective cutter knew about the process previous to mentioning the hair.

Atsugi had proved useful and slightly interesting, but continued to get on my nerves: I decided to leave and head for Hakone, a more rural and touristy area in the hills.

Encounter 7: The Seventh Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-29T21:30:00.000+09:00

I was reading the names of stations on the railway fares display board, trying to work out where my friend Naoya lived, when suddenly a girl was standing to my left asking if she could take a photo of me.

"Before" photo

I asked her why, and in answer she said something about how wonderful my hair was. When I asked her to cut off a dreadlock, she immediately did not want to. But I persuaded her that she could take photos of me before and after the cut, and she came around to the idea, cut the lock, and took another photo.

The Cut

"After" photo

The choreography of this exchange was somewhat strange. At some point, the girl realized we were in the way of people who wanted to buy train tickets, and she moved into the corner. With me facing her, I almost felt I was blocking her into the corner as we conversed. She was initially reluctant to discuss what to do with the hair, but we discussed how the wonderfulness of my hair seemed to have evaporated: now she had cut the hair off, she seemed far less impressed by it than when it had been attached to my head.

Having no other ideas for what to do with the dreadlock, the girl reluctantly decided to take it with her, and i asked her what she might want to exchange for it. She had a look throught her satchel and came up with an individually-wrapped single square of Aero chocolate. I couldn't help asking her if that was all she thought it was worth - 9 years of hair growth for a single square of chocolate? I eventually decided that if that is what she thought the hair was worth, then why should I argue with her? - perhaps chocolate for hair was rather a good deal. Off she went with the dreadlock she had cut, seeming relieved to be out of an awkward situation.

I left this exchange feeling somewhat fed up with the whole process - who was I to ask people to cut off my dreadlocks? And why should I put people under so much pressure to go through wiuth an exchange? On the other hand, however, she did walk into this by initiating the exchange. I wonder if this girl will be less likely in future to approach strangers for a photograph. I sincerely hope that this encounter did not traumatize her into not speaking to foreigners at all.

Despite, or because of, being in an urban environment, I had very little human contact until two days later.

Encounter 6: The Sixth Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-29T18:00:00.000+09:00

There were two signs on the door of the bath room: the one above, with red writing read, "No Swimming in the bath!" Below was a sign in black and white asking people with long hair to tie their hair up when entering the bath.

So I tied my hair up and went in the bath. I came out feeling a lot cleaner, and while I was drying, the man running the onsen came into the changing room to tell me it was about time I was out of the bath. He tidied up around me, and just as he was backing out of the room with a pile of towels, he commented that my hair was rather long, and musn't it be awfully inconvenient? At which point I got my scissors out and told him my spiel. He was rather surprised and taken aback, but first of all he assumed I meant him to take a single hair from the end of a dreadlock. I asked him to take from the root, but he still thought I meant a single hair. When I insisted that he cut off a whole dreadlock, he seemed quite shocked, and very reticent to do the deed.
I think that people are perhaps so impressed or in awe of the length of my hair that they feel it is a pity to have wasted all that time growing it. But from my point of view, none of the time growing my hair was wasted: it brought me a lot of interest and joy - even character, perhaps - and by this time it was time to move on.

As the onsen attendant cut through my dreadlock, he had a look of pain - or grief, even - it was almost painful to watch him. When the lock was removed, the man cradled it like a thing of great value. I asked him what should be done with it, and he said immediately that it should be kept at the onsen.

So I asked him what should be exchanged for it, and we agreed that he would go to the reception area and think about it.
After I went back to the reception area, the attendant plied me with rice crackers and sweets of various sorts. When I came to leave, it was raining, and the man insisted I take an umbrella with me.

I took this umbrella to be the exchange for the dreadlock, and it has served me well ever since.

That evening, I fled the rain and got on a bus heading down the hill to the city of Atsugi.

Encounter 5: The Fifth Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-29T13:00:00.000+09:00

I was in between shops, and just about to run out of money, when a friendly voice said, in English, "Do you need any help?"

I looked around into the grinning face of a Japanese fellow with not-so-short hair. My initial reaction was "no I'm fine, thanks" but being potentially on the cusp of another dreadlock-cutting encounter, I realized I had to be more open to all sorts of experiences, and allowed the conversation to open up. He asked me if I wanted a lift anywhere, and I explained that I was on the look out for an onsen, but otherwise had no particular geographic goal.

The man, whose name I forget, but it began with S, very quickly came around to mentioning my dreadlocks, so I unsheathed my scissors and thanked him, saying that anyone who mentioned my dreadlocks was asked to cut one off. He seemed a bit surprised, and very reticent to engage in a cut, saying, "not yet - it's far too sudden. Let me take you to the onsen first."

So the fifth dreadlock turned into a road trip!

S. drove me via a post office to an onsen that was closed for the day, so he decided to drive me to one beside a lake in the hills. He was so busy telling me all about how his grandfather had helped construct the bridges around the lake that he accidentally drove past the onsen he had thought, and decided to take me on down to an onsen in the next valley. This turned out to be a very long drive, and we had many long conversations about hair (he actually had one dreadlock hidden amongst his hair), about the various countries we had travelled (interesting how the more worldly people make for the more interesting experiences), and about the fact that he could not go into onsens because of his tattoos.

Prejudice against tattooed people is still very prevalent in Japan, and most often manifests in signs on the doors of bath houses and onsen establishments. The tattoo was once a revered art form, but is associated with the Yakuza, and therefore terrifies many a casual bather into thinking they are in the wrong bath house. Bath houses do not want to be thought of as the wrong bath house, and so do not let people with tattoos in.

Although he kept reminding me that he had not yet promised to cut off a dreadlock, we started to wonder what we might do with the lock if he were to cut one off. After a long moment's thought, he suddenly asked, "where in England are you from?"
I told him, as I tell most people, that I am from Herefordshire, the green bit next to Wales.
"What if," he said, "I were to go on a journey, in a few years' time, to take the hair back to where you come from?"

This seemed to me to be a marvellous suggestion, and having thought of it, he seemed to be much more enthusiastic about the idea of cutting off one of my locks.

The cut was made in the car park of the onsen, and S. happily tied the dreadlock in amongst his own hair and drove off back over the hill.

I went to the onsen for a long soak and another haircut.

Encounter 4: The Fourth Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-28T14:00:00.000+09:00

I was walking through the forest, and came to a road. Having seen the name "Fujiya" on my map a little way along the road, I decided to head for it, hoping that something good would become of my going there. Although the weather was too hazy to see the view of Mount Fuji that gave the establishment its name, I was pleasantly surprised.

Fujiya turned out to be a ramen shop, so I ate a plate of yakisoba noodles while chatting to the lady who had served them to me. I had packed up my bag and was about to leave when she commented that my hair was rather long, wasn't it? So I set up my camera and launched into my spiel.

The noodle lady was somewhat taken aback as I did so, but after selecting one of my locks with trepidation, she started to take the information quite matter-of-factly, especially when I explained that having such long hair was rather uncomfortable in such hot weather.

As she got the scissors right up close to the root of the dreadlock and cut it clean through, Mrs. Fujiya assured me that having my dreadlocks removed in this way, I would get gradually cooler as the weather got warmer. Then came the question of what to do with the resulting dreadlock.

We thought long and hard about it, and the Fujiya lady had no idea what to do with such a thing. So I asked if I should give her the lock, or if we should put it somewhere. She thought perhaps we should put it somewhere, so I suggested what about on this convenient hook by the door?

And she said, "Yes, that will be fine!" And so it was! I did not ask for anything in exchange for the lock, as I felt so well provided for by a fantastic lunch, and it somehow felt throughout this exchange like the lady was doing me a favour.

Full of noodles, I wandered back into the woods, and it was not until I got to the next town that I met anyone who chose to mention my dreadlocks.

Encounter 3: The Third Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-27T16:30:00.000+09:00

I was walking through the woods greeting everyone I met, when for the second time in one day, someone told me as he passed by that I look like Jesus. I asked him why. About the third word of his answer was "hair", . I told them about my hair and the removal process that had begun that very day. The guy and his female companion were students from China living in Tokyo. They seemed very impressed by my hair, and although that is probably the initial reason the guy mentioned Jesus, he also told me that he thought I would look like Jesus even with all my hair cut off. I can neither agree nor disagree with this, for reasons I outlined in the description of the previous encounter.

It is said that if you meet the Buddha on the path, you should kill him. Perhaps if you meet Jesus on the path you should cut some of his hair off.

The important thing is that the Chinese guy did cut off one of my dreadlocks. He was quite taken with it, and seemed to want to keep it, so I decided to let him have it, as long as he exchanged something for it.

He and his wife accepted this, and wondered what they should give me in exchange. Then she said something along the lines of "What about the Little Bottle of Green Potion?" and produced from her bag a little green bottle containing a potent green liquid.

The couple explained at length the various uses for it. It keeps the mosquitoes and other insects away, they told me, soothes aching muscles and joints, and if you're feeling run down after a day of hiking, you can even imbibe a drop or two and it will re-energize you. The potion did all of these things very well, but they did not mention to me the side effect, which was that it made my backpack smell of a mixture of Deep Heat and very strong Root Beer. This smell defined for me the rest of that summer. A year later, there are still parts of my backpack that, when sniffed, take me straight back to the humid forests of Japan and the continued search for the next dreadlock removal.

Encounter 2: The Second Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-27T14:30:00.000+09:00

A man came walking down the wooden stepped mountain path, in the opposite direction from me, and as he passed, made a throwaway aside comment that he thought I looked like Jesus. I am not convinced that this is, was or has ever been the case.

The very notion of "what Jesus looked like" suggests the existence of an accurate portrayal of a man who lived way before any photographic documentation was available, and also before the development of contemporary notions of portraiture.
Perhaps this man was referring to a widespread modern notion of Jesus with a long hair and beard. I did indeed have long hair and a beard. If this is instant qualification as an image of Jesus, then so be it, but in that case a lot of people in the world today look very "like Jesus"

As far as I know, no widespread portrayal of Jesus is adorned with dreadlocks - apart from perhaps some examples in the Ethiopian Orthodox / Rastafarian tradition church. Such images are unlikely to be widespread in East Asia, and yet it is there that I have had more such comments than anywhere else.

Little did this man know what he was letting himself in for by his quip. I immediately turned and asked the man why he would say such a thing. As soon as he mentioned my hair, I got my scissors out of my pocket and said "If it's my hair you're talking about, then please go ahead and cut one off." He started fiddling around with the ends of one of the dreadlocks, but I proffered him the roots, saying that he must go much closer...

This second cutter was very reluctant to cut a whole dreadlock off, wanting to go for a point about half way from my scalp to the end.
The aloofness of this man, his reticence to engage in the process was very strong. Perhaps, as a good-natured citizen out for a Sunday stroll, he simply did not want any trouble or interference into his routine. Am I wrong to provide people with a change in routine? I believe, on the contrary, (whether mistakenly or not) that I am doing people a service by providing them with experiences they would not otherwise have had.
But even discounting the potential annoyance this man had felt at his walk being interrupted, he was not only reluctant to cut, but reluctant to go the whole distance and cut really far down towards the root.
Why are people so reluctant? Do they not believe in the transience of hair? If you're going to cut any of it off, why only cut off 4 or 5 years' growth? Why not go for the whole 9 years?
Even when I found a decent root for this man to cut, he started cutting about 2 or 3 inches away from my scalp. I asked him to go closer, but he said it was too late: the scissors were already half way through.

While the majority of the dreadlock became detached, this process left behind a stump of dread hair, still attached. I realized there must be some use for it, so did not worry too much, and enjoyed the bemused feeling of holding, for the second time in my life, a dreadlock that had just been removed from my head.

When I asked the man what I should do with the dreadlock, he handed it back to me and said, simply, "keep." So I kept it. I have since divided this 4-stranded dreadlock amongst my family: one for each of my brother, sister, mother and father. What they choose to do with each strand remains to be seen.

Read On: The Third dreadlock removal.

Encounter 1: The First Dreadlock Removal

2010-06-27T14:00:00.000+09:00

I went for a walk in the woods with my friends Ryan and Nami and their young daughter Eunie. They knew that I was about to enter a period of time during which anyone who mentioned my hair would be asked to cut off one of my dreadlocks. Eunie was somewhat too young to worry about this, but Ryan and Nami knew that since they knew about the project in advance, they were exempt from eligibility to cut off any of my hair. As such, they did not mention my hair.

The first person to mention my hair was one of a group of four Japanese ladies who were descending Mt. Takao as the four of us were ascending. Having responded to my "Konnichiwa," one of the ladies exclaimed at the length of my hair, and I stopped in the path and approached her. For the first time, I said my "spiel", a semi-prepared explanation of the project that had just begun, and pulled out my scissors. The lady was surprised and the whole group seemed very excited.

Without much persuasion, the lady who had mentioned my hair selected and cut off a dreadlock, with an air of determination. We then had to decide what should be done with it now that it was free from my head. We discussed the various merits of the lady keeping the lock, or of me keeping the lock, or what about possibly leaving it by the path, and then suddenly the lady who had cut the lock remembered the shrine on top of the mountain and suggested I go and leave it there as an offering (to what or whom, she did not say). So I took the dreadlock with me, and after the second dreadlock was cut off, we got to the top of the mountain, and to the shrine, which was a little way over the other side. I wondered where the most appropriate place to leave a dreadlock at a shrine might be, but in the end simply tied it to the fence next to the money box.

Having this first dreadlock cut off was quite an emotionally exciting experience. I felt a real sense of "This is it: There is no turning back" and when the hair was detached, it seemed quite strange to hold it in my hands in front of me, this now separate entity that I had been so attached to for 9 years.

This was the beginning. Read on to find out more.