Encounter 41: The Thirty-eighth dreadlock removal

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

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

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

 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 

or 

(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

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

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