…getting the unruly birdsnest that I call hair tamed into sleek, straight-as-a-pin follicular beauty. The wonder, the agony: Japanese Hair Straightening.
The regime:
Wash
Blow dry
Apply vaseline-like substance to scalp to protect it (!)
Apply solution.
Have head shrinkwrapped in Saran Wrap, and sit under a weird revolving heater thing to make sure the plastic REALLY adheres to my hair. (Hot, hot, hot! I felt like a baked potato.)
Rinse.
3 (Three) hours of flat-ironing. I was starting to think she was flat ironing each individual strand of hair. When she finished, I thought, oh yay, that part is done. Nope, then the owner of the place came by to do the “second pass”.
Apply neutralizer. Allow to sit for “15 minutes.” 15 minutes in Chinatown beauty parlor speak is “45 minutes minimum” to the rest of us.
Shampoo.
Condition.
Blow dry. For 15 freaking minutes.
Cut.
Profit! Oh… Beauty! (Hairwise, anyway)
SIX HOURS. I felt bad for the poor woman who attended to me the entire time. She started asking me if maybe I didn’t need to have a cigarette break or something. I gladly obliged.
I absolutely love it though, and if it saves me the agony of having to get my hair straightened every week, only to have it revert to its former non-glory the moment I step within a 40 mile radius of water, then it was worth every boring, “Don’t move your head or it will have a weird wave in it!” moment. And every one of the many green pieces of paper that I handed over to have it done (at about 1/5 the price of anywhere else I’ve ever gotten prices for, so I’m not complaining.)
Not being japanese or having anything but straight floss limpy hair, I am now curious about what you have endured.
How often to do have to do this?
What kind of thoughts go through your brain while enduring this stuff? Could you read a book at all or was it mindless chitchat?
Do you have naturally curly hair?
Is this a normal occurence with Japanese women to bake themselves like a potato?
Do/can Japanese-asian women havecurly hair? My mind is boggling at this thought.
The longest I have spent in a salon is about two and a half hours when I splurged and got my hair highlighted last summer. While the results were great, there is some kind of humility lesson to be learned wearing a highlighting cap with tidbits of hair pulled through, making me look like a deranged chia pet.
Oh, and the upkeep and cost is just out of my tightwad price range. If I were a woman of color with curly hair that I hated, I would be too cheap to straighten it. Og made me a WonderBreadWhiteWoman cause it’s the lowest maintence.
Nah, Merhouse, I’m starting to come to grips with my insanity
This should be good for about 9 months - about when my hair will have grown out so much that it needs to be redone. I forgot to mention that this apparently makes it so that frizz is a thing of the past. If you’ve ever seen my hair on a humid day (and you clearly haven’t, since you still have your sight and are reading this) you would understand what this means to me.
I was allowed to read. Unfortunately, due to the sadisitic “Don’t move your head!!” admonitions, and their failure to have magazines taped to the ceiling, reading was sometimes challenging. As was playing chess on my cellphone. As for chit chat, well… that was tough. I’m STILL trying to figure out what she was trying to say when she told me “You just need blow dry in morning, no need blue.” Ooook.
And I do indeed have naturally curly hair. It’s not all self-deprecation - it was truly horrendously unruly and was getting impossible to deal with before work. We’re still trying to figure out exactly where I got my curly hair from. It’s a mystery.
A curly haired Japanese potato. My mind hurts.
The cost was steep, more than I have ever spent on my hair (and the first real chemical treatment I’ve ever done) but it will pay for itself in 10 weeks. Not too bad for something expected to last 9 months. And from what I hear, maintaining the roots is fairly easy - just blow dry them straight. The roots are the easy part to get to, so works for me.
It’s stories like this that make me really love my straight, thick, never frizzy, curly or wavy hair.
Good god woman, how did you endure that? The last time I sat under a salon hair dryer for even half an hour, my lips got horribly chapped from the heat. They didn’t heal for months.
How long will your straight hair last? I hope it’s a really long time and I’m glad you like it.
You do realize that people have major reconstructive surgery in less time than your hair took, don’t you
I want it!!!
Where? How MANY peices of green paper? Can you then color it? I need to keep my gray at bay and 9 months is WAY too long to go without color.
[Elaine Boosler]
I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for that long!
[/EB]
Ok, she was talking about labor and delivery, and more than six hours, but dayum!
I’ve always wanted to have my great big mop of hair braided into those teeny tiny braids that swing and let a cool breeze hit your scalp in the summer, but the time estimates scare me away.
Nine months though, that’s an awesome return on your time investment, yay you!
Just curious how this could last 9 months. By the end of that amount of time there will be about 4 or 5 inches of curly hair at the scalp end and straight hair the rest of the way. Will you have to use one of those flattening irons on the top of your hair?
It was 250, which is a lot less than all the other salons I checked. A LOT less - Most of the estimates I’d gotten were in the 700-950 range.
Oh and the other thing about my hair is, it doesn’t get truly curly until about a few inches out, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue - which is good considering my hair grows extremely fast. A year ago it was short - just above my chin line. Before the straightening, it was past my shoulders. After the straightening, it’s nearly to the middle of my back.
Two-time Thermal Reconditioning (aka Japanese Hair Straightening) vet checking in here. I’m happy for ya TellMe, it’s a big decision all right, but well worth it when you go to the right people. It really is like plastic surgery for the hair and yes, the hair that is treated stays straight permanently. The first solution breaks the chemical bonds in the hair that cause it to curl or wave, the flatironing reforms the strands and makes them straight, and the neutralizing solution keeps it that way.
May I ask what system you used? I used Liscio and the first time was just under five hours, the retouch took 3 1/2. Only had one round of flatironing each time though and it certainly didn’t last for 3 hours! But every salon can be slightly different and of course the systems differ as well.
It’s been well worth it for me too. I had wavy/somewhat frizzy hair that soooo did not suit my face, would not hold a style longer than an hour even in the driest of weather, and yet I just had to beat it into submission on a daily basis anyway. Once you get past the first two weeks of sheepdog-like flatness and get a little lift from the roots growing in, you won’t have another bad hair day for ages. I went for 7 months before the first retouch. Oh, and my stylist (not the one who did the TR but my regular haircut god) says he’s never seen my hair in such good condition since getting the TR done. You can color it too; the tech who did my retouch offered to do a semi-permanent color on the same day; otherwise I would have needed to wait two weeks to do permanent. Again, this is with Liscio so YMMV.
Enjoy your shiny straight hair!
To be honest, I’m sure what system was used. The stylist kept hinting that if my hair wasn’t SO long and SO curly, it would have been SO much quicker (but not in a rude way, more of a “Don’t start blaming me for this taking forever!” way.
And funny, “plastic surgery for hair” is exactly the way the owner described it to me in the first place.
