Umaibo as a Staple Food! How I Went from Rock Bottom to Popular Hairdresser Without Giving Up Even When Told, 'You Have No Sense, Why Don't You Quit?'

A Punk Kid Storms a Parisian Hair Salon!

A few months after miraculously getting hired following an interview where I wore a helmet, I joined 'PRS,' a stylish salon with a French atmosphere, and my delusions were already running wild.

“Alright! From now on, I’m going to race down the path to becoming a charismatic hairdresser!”
“I’ll be on the covers of magazines!”
“I’ll appear on TV!”
“I’ll even cut celebrities' hair!”

…It only took three days for those delusions to shatter.
Reality is harsh! The speed at which a delusion bubble bursts is faster than light!

“Yokouchi-kun, there’s hair left in the shampoo room drain again.”
“I’m sorry! I’ll clean it up right away!”

Yes, the first step toward becoming a brilliant, charismatic hairdresser was 'cleaning the drain.' This wasn't mentioned in any beauty magazines, though…

By the way, the name PRS comes from the destination display at an airport. Paris is PRS. In other words, it means 'a super Parisian-style hair salon.' A country punk kid like me had arrived at such a high-society salon. It must have been as awkward as a wild boar from Mount Tsukuba suddenly wandering into a department store in Ginza.

“Yokouchi-kun, you don’t need to answer the phone.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“Do you realize you have a thick accent?”

BAM! That’s right. I couldn’t shake my Ibaraki dialect, and my seniors even told me I was 'bilingual.' No, that’s a dialect! It’s not a foreign language!

The tragedy of Ibaraki being treated like a foreign country. My apologies to everyone in Ibaraki.

The errand boy who was completely full of himself

By the way, do you know what the most important mission for a hairdresser apprentice was back then? It was 'buying lunch for the seniors.' The top-secret mission of the beauty world, codenamed 'Lunchtime.'

You might think it sounds easy, but the orders were brutal.

“Go buy five 2-liter bottles of water.”
“Get the beef bowl bento from Matsuya and the rice balls from 7-Eleven.”
“If they’re sold out, don’t you dare buy something else! Get exactly these!”

“Make sure you’re back within an hour!”

In my heart, I was thinking, 'No way, an hour is impossible!' but I replied with a 'Yes!' in 0.3 seconds.

Pushing through the crowds in Harajuku, running around carrying heavy bags. Thinking back, was this just power harassment? No, maybe it was 'Special Muscle Hairdresser Training.' It was harder than the Tokyo Marathon—it was the Harajuku Obstacle Course.

By the way, the most honorable mission was the order from our French owner, Rene, to 'go buy a baguette.'

For that moment alone, I felt incredibly stylish. A kid who came from the countryside, walking through Harajuku carrying a baguette. 'I’m a real city person now!' I was completely full of myself.

I would buy a baguette at the open-air cafe 'AUX BACCHANALES' that used to be at Palais France along Meiji-dori, near the exit of the now-defunct Takeshita Street. Somehow, it made me feel incredibly stylish.
Those were the days.
(Tomo-kun, a colleague I met during this PRS era, is still a fellow business owner I meet with regularly!)

"Isn't this a scene from a Flipper's Guitar song?"
Or so I thought. I felt just like a Parisian.
Bonjour, merci, je t'aime, baguette~! (That's all the French I know.)

The Hair Show Crying Incident

A few months after joining the company, a joint hair show between PRS and other famous salons was held at Zepp Tokyo. A 'hair show' is the most glamorous stage for a hairdresser. I helped with preparations every day until late at night. Helping with models' hair color and styling, setting up the venue...

I'll do anything! Please let me do it! My enthusiasm was at its peak, to the point where I almost said, "I'll even clean the toilets!"

However, at the meeting the day before the event, while my colleagues and seniors were being assigned roles one after another—"Person A, you're on the left side of the stage..." "Person B, you're backstage..."—one of my superiors told me,"Naoki, you're off tomorrow, so you don't need to come."he said.

Excuse me?!! Why?!!

In that moment, my mind went blank. I might have even let out a "Huh...?" An "Error 404: Cannot Process" message was flashing in my brain. I pushed back, saying, "No, I'm coming too!" but was lightly brushed off with, "It's fine, it's fine."

That day, I cried alone on the stairs in front of the shop. I felt like the protagonist of a teen drama!

It would have been perfect if it had started raining, too. It was like a scene from episode 3 of a prime-time TV drama, 'Hairdresser Story: The Tearful Underdog Years'.

But the next morning, I got a call from a senior male colleague, K-san.

"Naoki, come to the shop right now."When I went, K-san handed me an old film camera.

"You, take pictures of me. Take lots of pictures of me while I'm cutting hair."
"But I don't know how to take pictures."
"It's fine, just press this and it'll take a photo."

I heard this from another senior later, but after I was taken off the list, K-san had apparently confronted my superior, asking, "Why did you take Naoki off?" Hearing that, I cried again in the middle of Harajuku. This time, they were happy tears.

Crying twice in the middle of Harajuku, on Ton-chan Street, is practically a tourist attraction. It's at the level where a guide would say, "And here is the famous 'Hairdresser's Tear Spot'."

Oh, of course, I took tons of photos of K-san that day! I pressed the shutter so much I thought the lens might break!

A Luxurious Life with a Full Course of Umaibo!?

Oh right, the money issue was also serious. At the time, a hairdresser assistant's take-home pay was 120,000 to 130,000 yen. That's "not nearly enough" to live alone in Tokyo.

The savior of that life was the "Umaibo" from the 105-yen corner at the convenience store! My poverty-stricken diet consisted of buying 10 Umaibo for 105 yen and eating 5 for lunch and 5 for dinner. This was my "Umaibo Full Course"!

What? "What about breakfast?"
I don't eat breakfast! (Serious face).
Being a hairdresser is a profession where you can naturally go on a "diet" (not really).

When I couldn't even pay rent, I ended up in the rare state of being 'unemployed with no fixed address.' In other words, I lived by 'bouncing from one girlfriend's house to another.' Every time I changed girlfriends, I moved around Tokyo. It was a 'romantic moving service.'

I was desperate, thinking, 'If I see a breakup coming, I have to find the next girlfriend or I'll be homeless,' so I would appeal to older women by saying, 'I'll do the housework, the laundry, anything.' I'm sorry for being such a terrible guy. I was just desperate.

The words 'You have no talent, why don't you quit?'

A few years later, I finished my training in Tokyo and returned to my hometown in Ibaraki. 'Alright, I'm going to bring the cutting-edge techniques I learned in Tokyo back to Ibaraki!'
...I was enthusiastic, but for some reason, my sales wouldn't go up at all. I remained stuck at a low of 200,000 to 300,000 yen in monthly sales.

One day, a senior colleague said this to me.

'You have no talent, why don't you quit?'

Boom!!! Those were heavy words that struck my heart.
It felt like a meteorite had hit me. Why was I failing?

Actually... I didn't have any confidence in myself. To cover that up, I would try desperately to talk while cutting hair, which meant it took me an hour and a half to cut a man's hair. (I can do it in 30 minutes now!)

I was trying to use my mouth to get by instead of using my hands. It's a common thing for stylists right after they debut.

And this period was my absolute rock bottom.

When I looked at a convenience store job magazine and saw the words 'Truck driver, 300,000 yen per month...', tears welled up in my eyes naturally.

'I'm not cut out to be a hairdresser. But I don't want to quit...'

I was at such a low point that a documentary titled 'Disqualified Hairdresser' could have been made about me.

The person who saved me from that was, unexpectedly, the 'senior I didn't get along with.' One day, a female customer I had served was served by that senior next, and she ended up requesting him.

'Hey, Naoki. Why do you think that customer requested me?'

'...Is it because you're skilled?'

'No. You cut that customer's hair even though she said she didn't want her bangs cut, right?'

'But I thought it would definitely look cuter that way.'

'That's it! Why don't you listen to people? First, listen properly to what the other person has to say, and don't do what they don't want done. You should make suggestions only after you've built a relationship.'

That one comment hit me like a bolt of lightning.

It was a shock like being electrocuted by a hair dryer. My cutting skills, my sense, my technique... before all that, I hadn't even mastered the basic ability to 'listen to the other person'.

Something more important than technique. That is, 'listening carefully to the other person.'
Please don't think, 'Wow, being a hairstylist is so deep.' This is the foundation of customer service.It is no exaggeration to say that this is the 'absolute, fundamental, super-basic of customer service.'It is no exaggeration to say that.

It's the kind of thing you're taught in your very first class at beauty school, but I was so focused on technique that I forgot to 'listen.' Ironically, the 'counseling before the cut' was more important than the cut itself. This was my own 'Columbus's egg'.

Striving for 1.5 million yen in monthly sales like my life depended on it

'If I can't reach 1.5 million yen in monthly sales by the time I'm 30, I'll just quit being a hairstylist.' From that point on, I made that resolution and worked like a madman.

On my days off, I spent all my time practicing cuts on wigs and models. I attended workshops as long as I could afford them. I studied cuts in magazines. I stole techniques from my seniors.

I felt like I had no choice but to crawl my way up from rock bottom. It was like being in a 'hairstylist version of Rocky.' You could almost hear the background music playing: 'Pa-pa-ra, pa-pa-ra, pa-pa-ra-ra~♪'

As a result, I achieved 1.6 million yen in monthly sales before I turned 28! By the time I was nearly 30, I even had 2 million yen in my sights.

Predicting the 'intense owner's' mood in the morning parking lot

However, a new trial was coming. That was my encounter with the 'most terrifying owner in history.' The 'final boss of the hairstylist world' had appeared!

He was so strict that every morning, the staff would watch him park his car and try to predict his mood for the day.

'Oh, he's holding his bag tightly today... that's the worst-case scenario for his mood.'
'Oh, his walk is a bit light today! He's in a good mood!! Maybe something good happened yesterday, haha.'
I soon became able to perform the 'morning owner mood reading' myself.

But I worked in that environment for six years. Why so long? Because we had so many customers. It was said to be the best salon in Tsukuba. Being able to cut so many customers' hair was a great joy. That's why I worked in the salon thinking, 'When I become a leader, I want to rethink many things, change my thoughts and methods, and make things better!'

However, when my child was born at 30 and I bought a house at 31, an unexpected problem occurred.

I got a phone call from the owner,'Is it true that you're going independent?'I could feel the flames of anger through the phone.

'Huh? I have no such plans at all. I just bought a house, too.'

It was a complete misunderstanding, but this incident led me to decide that I 'had no choice but to go independent.'

But looking back now, I also think, 'If I had opened my heart more, been honest, and reached out to the owner, would the result have been different?'

I was under his care for a little over six years, and I had irreplaceable experiences during that time. It was precisely because of that harsh environment that I was able to grow as both a person and a hairstylist. The experiences from those days are serving me well now.

(And the colleagues I met during my time as a store manager, with whom I gritted my teeth and worked hard (Iimura, Shimizu, Hoshi, Furuuchi, Nakayama, Yamada, Fukuda), are still working hard with me today as Y&Co. colleagues.)

Now that I am in the position of a company president myself, I can finally understand the conflicts and struggles the owner faced back then. While I cannot repay them directly, I will continue to make this a better company for our crew, our customers, and all our business partners.

Looking back, my training days were a time when I learned not just hairdressing techniques, but also important lessons about being a person. It was because I mastered those things that I was able to become a stylist who generates 2 million yen in monthly sales, even starting from rock bottom.

The secret to success as a hairdresser?

It is simply to 'listen to people properly.'

No, I am serious about this. If there were a Nobel Prize for hairdressers, this advice would be enough to win it.

With that said, next time, the story will finally move toward my once-in-a-lifetime, high-stakes independence. Stay tuned!

Editorial Cooperation / Cork Lab Guild (Text: Seiko Sasama, Editing: Shunsuke Tanomogi, Illustration: Izui-zu)