Is it coincidence or is it destiny? This is how I became a hairdresser.
I started playing softball tennis in middle school, and when I was in my second year of middle school, I took third place at the Fukuoka Prefectural Tournament.
I entered Nakatsu Technical High School in a neighboring prefecture on the strong recommendation of my middle school teacher and Mr. Gondo of Nakatsu Technical High School.
Back then, when I entered the school, there were only boys and it wasn’t much fun to me. So I had pretended to be sick to leave school early twice…
When I tried to do it a third time, my teacher Mr. Gondo came up to my side and told me off saying, “Take the Seirogan* and you’ll be just fine!” (*Seirogan is a typical Japanese medication as a treatment of the digestive tract.) After that, I just practiced and practiced 365 days a year. In my sophomore year of high school, I was able to participate in the national tournament, but my grades were not good enough. I changed my attitude and spent all my time practicing, but I hurt my knee and had knee surgery in the spring of my junior year. I was hospitalized for a month, and that meant the end of my athletic career, and at the same time I had to give up my path to higher education.
I decided to get a job, and I joined a factory in Yokohama, where makes equipment for Toshiba power plants. I belonged to a section called “Auxiliary Equipment of the Design Department,” where they designed high-pressure machines and large tanks that converted steam back to water and used the water to make hot water of 100 degrees or higher. Even though the work was going well, the heavy responsibilities of this job made me start wondering “Am I… suitable for this job?”
A few years later, one of my coworker ladies in my department told me that she is attending beauty school at night and that there are six men in her class who want to become hairdressers. The moment I heard that story, I suddenly remembered the scene of two or three hair salons that I looked in, when I went to look for my mother on New Year’s Eve. That was when I was about ten years old. All the salons I looked at were very lively and looked busy.
Most of all, I remember feeling very happy and proud to see my mother had became very beautiful when she came home. I thought, “If I gave my life to it, I might be able to do this kind of work to make people beautiful”. Then I started to think about changing job and talked about it with 30 people in the section I was working in. They all said, “Yes, you should try it. Good luck with that!” They were very supportive. This is the origin of my life as a hairdresser. I think of “if I hadn’t gone to Nakatsu Technical High School… or if I hadn’t joined Toshiba, I wouldn’t be the person I am today”.
When I remember all these things, I’m so grateful for the people I’ve met in my life, and at the same time, I talk to myself “Let’s try harder and harder! I can do it.”
