Christmas Vacation and Blonds

Inevitably during the two-week Christmas vacation young boys and teenagers will start dyeing their black hair blond.  Or maybe I should say bright yellow.  Some dye their whole head of hair, others dye in stripes and still others yellow spots like polka dots.  Some others have long yellow strands of hair hanging from the back of their heads like tails.  The schools do not allow the children to dye their hair during the school year so vacations give them a chance to let loose, I suppose. 

I am not sure of the cultural significance of this phenomenon, but I also noticed that the young people in Japan also liked to dye their hair brown or blond.  They called themselves "Yankees".  Some of the teenagers here also tell me that they want to look like an American.   You could say that they are not content with their black hair which is like everyone else's here.  But that might be reading too much into it.  Sometimes I think these teenagers just want to add a little color and excitement to an otherwise rather drab and poor time during  Christmas and New Year vacation.

By the way, the dye is really, really cheap -- only about ten cents per pack which can dye five or six heads of hair.