Baby's first haircut

I was in dire need. I haven't gotten a haircut since a few weeks before I left, and I needed one bad. I was little nervous, since I don't know how any barbershop talk like "A little off the top" or maybe "did you see that game last night?". Here's the before picture:
I had a few errands to run, so I figured I'd walk around doing those and stop in if I found someplace that looked inviting. I picked a place near the station, with both the largest number and biggest size barber poles I saw. Turned out to be a good choice, they were pretty easy to communicate with and seemed like they could handle not black, not straight hair.

They pointed me to chair 7 (out of 20 or so) and as soon as I sat down, a girl came over and asked "Shave suru?", which I just learned Friday is the plain form of "shimas", so I totally understood. I looked around, saw that everyone else was getting shaved, and figured what the hell. She started to lather me up, and then gestured to the edges of my eyebrows and the area a unibrow would be if I had one and said "koko?". I thought I said "no", but I must have said "No, don't skip those areas" because she proceeded to lather them up and shave them too. She did a nice job, lots of hot towels later, a guy came up to cut my hair. I had studied before I went and now know "Mijikai" means short. So I pointed and said "mijikai", and he replied "Sho-to?" (short) and I got my haircut. Here's the after, but I wore a hat all day today, so it may not do it justice.
I also finalized my winter vacation plans. I get a week off for new years, and I decided to go to Kyoto. I finally got a hotel booked, so the next step was train tickets. I was a little nervous about getting the right kind of tickets for the right day, but I think it worked out. I'm going to bring my tickets to class tomorrow and have my teacher reassure me.

Last week, I asked the guy who would know what the thing to do in Utsunomiya on a Saturday night is. He said he was entertaining visitors, but I should go up to the Lion's Head Pub and meet anyone who speaks English. So that's what I did. I figure it would be dead until 10 or so, so I started off at home with dinner, beer, and tequila. Here's a picture I though was funny after an hour or so of that. It's tequila and takos, get it?

I went up to the bar, and it was all guys, but I met some people that I have a feeling I'll be seeing around, so it was an OK night. It started raining while I was walking there, but I managed to give the taxi driver directions.

Today, I rode my bike around for a few hours, looking around town. It's just a lot easier than driving and finding parking here. I stopped at the "Hard Off" second hand shop, just to look around. The DVD section had a couple of shelves of American movies in Japanese. I bought Star Wars. Hopefully, I'll learn some Japanese from it. I'm sure it will come in handy being able to say "That's no moon". The thing that kills me isn't so much the language, it's the voices. C-3PO and Darth Vadar just don't sound right. And they keep saying "Lu-ku" when they mean Luke.