At Least It'll Grow Back by SteDJ

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I haven't posted for ages, but have had this sitting around in an unfinished state for over a year.

When I read buzzbro's recent story on here about the Barber Belt, it struck me that this latest story of mine has some slight similarities (i.e. a story set in an unconventional barber shop) so I decided to finish it and post it.

Be aware that the main character is a 16 year old, there are no sexual references, no headshaving and the story is complete fiction.

Apologies to anyone reading this from Japan for any cultural or linguistic errors.

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At Least it will Grow Back

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As we drew level with the front of the barber’s shop, I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What the hell is that?! There’s no way I’m going in there…"

"Welcome to 21st Century Japan," said Kenji. "And yes, you are most definitely going in there."

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It was 2018, I was 16 and my dad had been relocated from our home in London to Tokyo on a two-year secondment with his work. It had been decided that my mum and I would accompany him, and that I would spend the last two years of my schooling in the equivalent of the sixth form (years 12 and 13) at an international boarding school there. Naturally, I was more than apprehensive, not just about starting a new school, but a boarding school in a foreign country I knew very little about. I had been to France a couple of times and even spent a couple of months there one summer on an exchange visit, but this was going to be something altogether much bigger and very, very different.


A week after arriving in Tokyo, I found myself on my first day at my new school, sitting in the school student welfare manager's office. Said manager (or 'Sato-san' as I was told I must address her) was a pretty, petite, white-coated young lady, born and bred in Tokyo and with jet black hair, soft brown eyes and a friendly smile, and was responsible for all the domestic, medical and well-being arrangements for the students in the school. I must admit that I had expected her to be an older, more matriarchal individual, so I was pleasantly surprised by her friendly demeanour and calming manner. She prided herself on being able to speak 12 languages, including of course, English, which she did to a high level with just a hint of a Japanese accent, which I have to say I found quite endearing.


"Right, so you’ve seen the doctor, the dentist and the optician. I can see you’ve got your school uniform, and you’ve been assigned your dormitory. There just remains your hair now. It really does need a lot of cutting, young Webster-kun. I did find all these honorifics like -kun and -san rather bizarre, but it was just a question of getting used to them, along with many other aspects of Japanese life, as I would soon find out with a vengeance.


My hair was admittedly a bit unruly; four or five inches long all over, well over my collar and ears and hanging over my eyes. It usually had a mind of its own whatever I did with it, and even though I hated the idea of having it cut, going by all the neatly groomed male students I had noticed since arriving at the school, I had already figured that it was a dead cert that I would be losing at least some of it sooner rather than later.


Sato-san turned to her computer and started hammering away at the keys, muttering away as she did so, partly in English and partly in Japanese.

"OK. Language: English; name: Webster Richard. Height and weight Webster-kun?"

"170cm and about 70 kilos Sato-san" I replied.

"OK, hair type: wavy; thick, hair colour: dark blond. Face shape?" She shot me a quick glance before returning to the computer "Oval…"

Sato-san continued to tap away at the keyboard. I had no idea what all this had to do with getting a haircut. However, I would no doubt find out later â€" which in no uncertain terms, I did.

"OK, now… Service…. Style number 17, taper, yes, 5 millimetres… sideboards 25%, part left, top 40 millimetres, blend yes… shampoo… no, spray gel, yes, save yes, repeat 21 days, payment account…."

After another minute or two at the screen, Sato-san triumphantly spun her chair round to face me.

"OK, all ready. Check your school app and you’ll find a QR code for the barber’s shop. You just need to show it when you get there â€" your cutting is paid for on the account of the school. I’ll call one of the year 13s to accompany you since it’s your first time."


Sure enough, there was a new notification on my phone, but only a small part was in English; what would turn out to be the crucial information was in Japanese.


Just then, there was a knock on the door, and I was soon introduced to Sato-san’s chosen year 13 student chaperone, a medium-height slim lad called Kenji, immaculately dressed in the same school uniform as I was wearing with dark trousers, white short sleeved shirt and blue tie, but unlike me he had a rather severe short back and sides haircut. Like Sato-san, Kenji-kun (to give him his full form of address) spoke excellent slightly Japanese accented English, and we were soon on our way out of school and up the road to the barber’s.


As we drew level with the front of the barber’s shop, I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What the hell is that?! There’s no way I’m going in there…"

"Welcome to 21st Century Japan," said Kenji. "and yes, you are most definitely going in there. Have you never had a robot haircut before?"

"No, I certainly haven’t, and there’s no way I’m going to start now."

"Well Sato-san says you are, and so do I, so come on, let’s get you inside."


"Get your QR code ready; you’ll need it to get in."

The frontage of the shop was almost completely made up of plate glass, affording a clear, if rather disturbing view of everything going on inside. In small silver lettering on the glass were the words ‘Barber Shop’ and ‘Haircutting’ in both English and Japanese, and to one side was a revolving barber pole. It seemed the Japanese favoured the American style red, blue and white stripes rather than the British red and white, with which I was more familiar back home.


Kenji pushed the door open. I stood, frozen to the spot, my mouth dry and my breathing suddenly shallow. The last time I had felt like this was when I had volunteered to do a bungee jump as part of a charity fundraising event a couple of years previously. Kenji stared at me impatiently and muttered something in Japanese in an exasperated tone of voice before finally grabbing my arm and dragging me through the door.
The entrance lobby of the barber shop was dominated along one wall by what looked like a large electronic ticket machine with various screens and buttons; a bit like the kind you find in London tube stations.


Kenji grabbed my phone out of my hand, scanned the QR code against one of the screens, and to the sound of a gentle swish, a sliding door on the opposite wall opened, and an illuminated arrow and ‘welcome’ sign projected onto the floor directed us through to the inner sanctum of what was the weirdest and scariest barber’s shop I had ever witnessed. It all reminded me of something out of Star Trek or Thunderbirds. Despite my young age, I had become a big fan of all these ancient TV sci-fi series, and I felt I had just walked onto a film set of one of them. The sound was the thing that struck me first â€" all electronic whizzing and whirring punctuated by the familiar buzzing and clipping noises more typical of a barber shop.


I had just begun to take in my surroundings when Kenji told me that I must pay attention and follow the instructions on my phone, the first of which had just appeared on the screen and read, ‘dress in protective apron’. Another illuminated arrow appeared on the floor directing me to where Kenji was standing next to a rack of not so much aprons, but long pale blue nylon smocks arranged on a rail in size order. A diagram on the wall above the rack helpfully showed the correct way to wear the smock in a ‘back to front’ manner with the fastening behind the neck. Kenji had already selected one for me though and stood holding it open as I reluctantly put my arms into the wide sleeves and then eased myself into the voluminous rustling garment. Kenji then quickly and tightly snapped the poppers closed at the back of my neck, and feeling more than a bit self-conscious dressed in the flowing ankle length outfit, I headed with him over to a row of seats in what appeared to be the waiting area. It was only then that I could properly take in the frightening reality of where I was.


In short, this was a robotised barber shop which, until now, I had thought purely to be the stuff of science fiction. Behind each of the six barber chairs was a floor mounted electronic robot device set on a cylindrical pedestal, which brought to mind the daleks from those old episodes of Doctor Who on TV. Unlike the daleks though, these robots were equipped with a flexible multiple jointed telescopic arm, expertly fine-tuned to perform haircuts on its human victims. To the sound of high-pitched motorised whizzing and whirring noises, the arm frantically moved about, contorting itself around the customers’ heads, all the time while a further arm attached to the robot held the client in some kind of clamp around the chin, presumably to stop them from moving. The whole place was dominated by the aroma of disinfectant and ozone from hot electric machinery as cooling vents in the sides of the robotic pedestals pumped a steady stream of warm air into the room, clearly negating the need for any kind of heating in the place.

Apart from ourselves and the customers in the chairs, there was not a single human being in sight. Hair was falling freely onto the customer’s blue smocks as well as onto the floor around the chairs â€" perhaps the only thing in this weird place that appeared to be remotely normal for a barber’s shop.


"Cool, eh?" grinned Kenji. "I bet you don’t have these places where you come from."

"You could say that." I diplomatically replied, still not quite accepting the fact that very soon it would be me who was in the clutches of one of those godforsaken machines. "How does it know what to do?"

"Sato-san will have taken care of all that when she created your online account."

"Of course, all that stuff she was putting in the computer… Does it ever go wrong?"

"Never. Well only if you move around while it’s trying to cut your hair. But then a human barber can go wrong too if you try to do that. I’ve been coming here for almost two years now, and look â€" there’s nothing wrong with my hair. And because it always cuts it the same, you can’t end up with an accidentally shorter or longer haircut than usual."

Kenji’s haircut, whilst on the rather short side and brutally clipped round the back and sides, was pretty immaculate, but I was still less than convinced about the whole thing as I sat nervously on the edge of my seat awaiting the inevitable.


I didn’t have long to wait. One of the robots had just fallen motionless and silent, the barber chair had sunk gently floorwards and the screen ahead of the chair appeared to be instructing its client to leave. The young man got up from the chair suitably shorn and headed for the exit, slipping out of his blue smock and throwing it into a slot in the wall by the exit door. We exchanged a muttered ‘konnichiwa’ as he passed, no doubt his curiosity having been piqued by the presence of a foreigner in his midst.


"This will be yours," said Kenji, a tone of satisfaction in his voice. "Wait until it calls you though." I’m sure my heart rate increased by several beats a minute at that stage, and I watched as the chair was momentarily enveloped in a blue-ish mist and a vacuum robot cleaned up the cut hair from the floor around the base of the chair.

"Hygiene," said Kenji. "They always sterilise the chair and equipment between customers."


At that point, my phone pinged and instructed me to take a seat in chair number three. An illuminated arrow once more appeared on the ground indicating the location of said chair, and I gingerly made my way across to meet my fate.


"Have fun," grinned Kenji, now enjoying every minute of my intense discomfiture.

Convinced I was now playing the starring role in some kind of dystopian nightmare, I hesitantly climbed into the pale grey leather upholstered chair, placed my feet on the footrest and almost immediately, the show began. The chair silently and smoothly raised itself about a foot into the air and to the sound of a high-pitched whirring electric motor, a robot arm then reached out and firmly clamped itself around my jaw, totally immobilising my head and momentarily inducing panic as I realised that I was now committed and there was no escape. Next, what appeared to be a scanner of some kind then reached out and quickly whizzed around my head, its business end emanating bright green light like a laser. The screen on the console below the mirror ahead of me then started scrolling manically with incomprehensible code of some kind, before flashing up a series of instructions accompanied by a robotised voice, including the need to sit still and the location of the emergency stop button to be used in the event of any emergency, heaven forbid. Sato-san had obviously selected English as my default language when she had registered me, which was naturally very helpful.


The cutting then began. I was caught by surprise as a shrill buzzing suddenly filled the air as the other robot arm, this time equipped with a powerful and highly efficient hair clipper suddenly extended itself and quickly whizzed up the back of my head, sending chunks of my wavy dark blond hair flying into the air. I tried to flinch, but the clamp’s firm grip on my jaw effectively precluded movement of any kind, and the machine lined itself up for further multiple devastating trips up the back of my head. My shoulders were soon covered in four-inch-long clumps of my hair, some of it then slithering down the blue smock to form a heap in my lap. Meanwhile, the machine from hell was focussing its robotic attention on the left side of my head, as the manically buzzing clippers made light work of transferring all the hair from around and above my left ear to my nylon-covered lap and the floor. Scary though it was, the robot was a truly incredible machine, and strangely reminiscent of the kind that they have used in car factories for many years. There was nowhere the blades couldn’t reach; the cutting head swivelled to and fro, left and right with amazing almost human-like dexterity courtesy of the multiple flexible joints that made up the electronic arm. The right side of my head was soon shorn to match the left side before everything went quiet.


I stared in disbelief at my unfortunate image in the mirror. I looked utterly ridiculous, my back and sides as good as shaved, and the top a great haystack of untamed chaos. Of course, that situation didn’t last long, as the same robot arm smoothly extended itself above my head, this time brandishing a different attachment on the end of it. It resembled something more likely to be part of a kitchen food processor than a device for cutting hair, but whatever it was, I didn’t like the look of it as it hovered menacingly above me for what seemed an eternity before it screamed into action with a muted high-pitched shriek. Before I could take in what was happening, the arm lowered itself and plunged the whirring attachment into the long hair on top of my head, and within seconds, hair was once again flying everywhere. In fairness, the machine was unexpectedly gentle against my scalp, and was obviously carefully measuring what to cut without digging in too hard. In less than a minute, the crazed cutter had reduced the top of my hair down to no more than an inch and a half, and was now whizzing around the sides, presumably blending the freshly cut top with the back and sides that it had clippered off a few minutes before.


I was now covered with a copious scattering of long hair clippings, not just on my shoulders and all down the front of my blue smock but also on my face and in my ears. I really wanted to relieve the itching, but even though the sleeved garment I was wearing would have allowed me to move my arms, (unlike if I had been wearing the more traditional sleeveless barber’s cape that I was more used to) I dare not move for fear of upsetting the machine, so I sat there, sweating in immense discomfort willing this bizarre experience to be over as soon as possible. It didn’t help matters that I could see Kenji staring at me in the mirror taking in every detail and presumably relishing every minute of this embarrassing saga.


The ‘food mixer’ then retracted, and what appeared to be stage three of my mechanised torture then kicked off with a robotic rasping shave all around my hairline, up into my neck, round my ears and across my sideboards, shaving them off about a quarter of the way down my ear. At that point it made sense; I remembered Sato-san saying something about 25% sideboards when she was inputting my data into the computer. Clever stuff indeed.


I had only been in the chair for about five minutes, but I was really beginning to feel restless and couldn’t wait to be liberated from the grasp of this absurd machine. Said machine had other ideas though, as with another mechanical whizzing sound, the arm reappeared above my head and proceeded to spray me from all angles with a fine mist of some pleasant-smelling perfumed substance. If the earlier stage was a bit like being attacked by a demented food mixer, then this was like being in a car wash. The liquid ran in rivulets down my face, but once again, I sensibly complied with the instruction on the screen to keep still and resisted the temptation to raise my arms to deal with the irritating discomfort. The cutting was clearly over by this stage, and the final stage was performed by a combined brush and hairdryer apparatus, blasting a concentrated jet of burning hot air all over my head and into my face, removing the stray hairs and making short work of forming my hair into a smart side parted traditional short back and sides.


After what must have been the quickest, strangest and most devastating haircut I had ever experienced, the machine finally fell silent, and I felt intense relief as the clamp and robotic cutting arm retracted and the chair silently sank back down to the ground. Having been frozen on ‘Sit Still; Do Not Move’ for the duration of the haircut, the screen changed to ‘Please vacate chair. Deposit apron at collection point by exit. Thank you.’


As I stood up to leave, an avalanche of hair tumbled down from my lap to join the considerable heap that had already gathered on the floor. I hastily ripped the so-called apron off, dropped it in the designated slot in the wall, and rejoining Kenji, headed for the door as fast as I could and before the machine had any chance to change its mind and decide to shave me bald.


It’s often normal practice for most people after a haircut to rub a hand up the back of the neck to feel the damage, and I was no exception. I gasped in horror as I felt smooth skin at the hairline, then bristles blending into the inch and a half long top. I had lost one hell of a lot of hair in such a shockingly short space of time, and apart from the difference in colour, my haircut was now a dead ringer for Kenji’s. This was going to take some getting used to.


"At least it’ll grow back," I said to Kenji as we set off back to school.


"I don’t think so Richard-kun. You’ll be back here every twenty-one days without fail until you finish school….."

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