Hair styling is a combination of science and art, but for foreign residents living in Japan, working with a Japanese hair stylist can sometimes feel like asking an oil painter to suddenly work with pottery.

Despite the uptick of non-Japanese residents living in Tokyo, we still only make up 4.7% of the city’s total population, and with many ethnic Asians comprising that figure, this means those with non-Asian hair types are few and far between. With needs that are often very different from East Asian people — from texture and color, to styling preferences — there are numerous factors that make a trip to the salon drastically more difficult, and that’s before you consider any potential language barriers.

Originally from Iceland, Thelma Run Heimisdottir, 32, stands out on the streets of Tokyo thanks to her thick, wavy, red hair — though it can be the source of hardship when she steps into a hair salon. She recalls one such horror story she experienced at one appointment: “I asked for them to cut in layers,” she says, “but I watched as they just cut short chunks out of my hair as a way to ‘create layers.’”