Our staff gets into the spirit and style of the annual celebration.
Recently, our Japanese-language reporter Seiji Nakazawa has been feeling a little worn out. The shorter days, longer nights, and colder weather that sets in at this time of year has sapped his energy, and he’s been looking for a way to get it back.
▼ Seiji, showing his recent energy level
Luckily, he found one by looking at the calendar. In Japan, November 22 is Twintail Day, an unofficial holiday celebrating the double-ponytail hairstyle. As a proper otaku, Seiji is an unabashed twintail fan, and so he thought it would boost his spirits if he could spend the day surrounded by twintails.
However, this year November 22 falls on a Monday, which meant Seiji had to be at work. Since he’d be in the office all day, the only way he was going to be surrounded by twintails is if his coworkers did their hair that way, which is how we ended up with nine middle-aged dudes all putting their hair in twintails for the first time.
Since this whole thing was Seiji’s idea, naturally he had to participate too, so when he walked in the door on Monday morning, he looked like this.
“It turns out it’s harder than I thought to do anime-style twintails,” Seiji discovered. “I wanted them to stand up and have some verticality, but that meant having to form the bunches closer to the back of my head, which makes them hard to see from the front.”
“Maybe it’s because my hair is thin,” Seiji wondered. “And while you’re in the middle of bunching up your hair, it’s hard to see how everything is positioned just by looking in the mirror. I wish I could have had a bird’s-eye view.”
Next up, Takashi Harada.
Experienced reporter that he is, Takashi did a bit of research first. “I Googled ways to do twintails, and I was surprised how many different strategies there are! A lot of people said that doing the bunches higher up on your head gives you a glamorous look, so that’s what I went for…”
“…but I think I might have just ended up looking like a weirdo.”
Now we come to office tough-guy Masanuki Sunakoma.
We’re used to seeing a whole lot of different hairdos from Masanuki, but twintails are new territory for his head.
“I was worried that my hair wasn’t going to be long enough, but it turned out OK,” said Masanuki, who, like the rest of the staff, got this assignment sprung on them by Seiji at the last minute. Unfortunately, we may never know what Masanuki would look like with longer tails, as he told Seiji “Thank you for this unforgettable experience, but I don’t think I’ll be doing this again.”
And what about baby-faced Ahiru Neko?
Seiji was expecting some nice synergy between the usual youthful atmosphere that surrounds Ahiru Neko and the twintail hairstyle, and…
…sure enough, Seiji could feel a sort of tomboyish-charm from those two stalks of hair.
Ahiru Neko’s comments, though, weren’t quite so sunny. “Even though I did my hair like this, I didn’t feel like it caused any great change in the world. I can understand tying your hair up if your bangs are getting in the way or putting it in a tail to keep everything neat in back, but what’s the point of having two tails sticking up from your head like a pair of horns? I just don’t get it…but maybe that pointlessness is what people like about this hairstyle?”
▼ We suspect someone might be secretly pouring salt into Ahiru Neko’s shampoo bottle.
We come next to P.K. Sanjun. If Ahiru Neko is our team’s baby face, P.K. is our “rambunctious elementary schooler face.”
P.K. is usually a bundle of energy when he comes through the door, bursting with eagerness to shout “Good morning!” to one and all. On this day though…
…he was decidedly somber.
Seiji was baffled. How could anyone not feel invigorated by twintails? The answer is that P.K. isn’t sure what he made actually counts as twintails or not.
Like Seiji, P.K. found that twintails can be very tricky to position, and the best he could do was tie up a thin, random bunch of hair on either side of his scalp. “Most people probably wouldn’t even call these twintails,” admitted P.K.
Moving on, it’s Yuichiro Wasai’s turn.
While maturity is something that’s generally in short supply in our office, when you can find it, you’ll usually find it in Yuichiro. But what we couldn’t find…
…were any twintails on his head!
It’s not like Yuichiro to just completely forget about a work assignment like this, but we guess everyone makes mis-
Oh, he did remember! Unfortunately, since Seiji sprang his Twintail Day idea on the team at the last minute, it’s not like anyone had time to really grow their hair out for it. Since Yuichiro’s is so short, the end result just looks like he’s got some rubber band trash stuck in his hair.
Our boss, Yoshio, doesn’t like to elevate himself above his staff, and so he agreed to do his hair in twintails too.
Alright, boss, show us what you’ve got!
Well how about that. When Yoshio puts his hair in twintails, he ends up looking like Earwig/Aya, the star of Studio Ghibli’s first-ever CG anime, Earwig and the Witch. However, he’s now looking for a hair-restoration spell. “I had to really tug on my hair to get the tails even this long, and I think I might have damaged some follicles.”
We’re down to our last two twintail models, so let’s check in with Mr. Sato.
Like Masanuki, Mr. Sato has an extremely colorful hairstyle resume, so we had a hunch he might be able to pull twintails off…
…and sure enough, this is far from the most shocking look we’ve seen for the guy.
▼ Though the combination of twintails and leather jacket made for sort of a cyberpunk aesthetic.
“They came out better than I thought they would,” said Mr. Sato, “but they’d look better if my hair was longer, I think.”
And finally, let’s check out Go Hatori.
▼ Fun fact: Go has the largest retro video game T-shirt collection out of anyone on our staff.
Come on in, Go!
Out of the group, Go’s twintails came out the best, with plenty of length and great positioning.
And maybe because of that, he was also the most personally pleased with the results. “With my hair like this, every time I move my head I feel like a palm tree blowing in the breeze,” said Go. “It puts me in a happy mood, and I want to jump around to feel the tails bouncing. It’s a totally energizing hairstyle!”
But again, this was a work day. “OK everybody, get cracking,” ordered Yoshio, and our twintailed writers took their seats and started typing away.
In the end, everyone came away with a greater understanding of the power of twintails, and a newfound appreciation for everyone who takes the time to do their hair this way.
Photos © SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]