Well, New Years Eve I finally went through with a change I’d been meaning & threatening to do for awhile. Inspired a bit by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, I shaved off my beard and what remained of my rapidly greying hair. And here’s the result:

I’m still getting used to it, but I think it looks pretty good. It must be a little bit of an improvement, my Hot-or-Not rating has gone up by about a point to 5.6 (at least at the moment). Wow, I’m average at last…

Reaction here has been favorable too, somewhat surprisingly. Cutting your hair or shaving your head in a major way has always been pretty significant in Japanese culture, so I was a little worried. But the people at work, while surprised, seemed to like it. The reactions of the kids were fun; kindergarden & elementary were all wide eyes and open mouths. And I’ve gotten a few “cool” and “nice” comments at the JHS. The local mid-year JET conference was quite entertaining, between surprised looks and people that just plain didn’t recognize me. Most thought I looked quite a bit younger (one claiming 20 years, just how old did I look before?!? ^_^;; ).

Looks like I might have to continue on to the next step of the “Queer Eye” makeover — my clothes that worked well with the beard don’t quite seem to suit me as well now…

[comment from old blog]

Joe wrote:
Wow! I am not sure what to think actually.
You’ll have to tell me how it wears on you.
01/18/05 14:15:38

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