Norio Ariumi (left) came to Chestnut Hill 28 years ago to start Norio of Tokyo Salon where he has been grooming many loyal customers who threw him a party two weeks ago. Maryam Lavasani, a native of Iran, and a stylist with Norio for 20 years, was also honored at the party. (Photo by Erin Vertreace)

A young military wife living with her husband in Japan more than 30 years ago frequented a hair salon in Tokyo where a young man named Norio Ariumi worked diligently. He worked six, sometimes seven days a week for 13 to 14 hours at a stretch.

“We had to practice, practice, practice,” said Ariumi, who owns Norio of Tokyo, one of Chestnut Hill’s longest running salons.

For 28 years, Norio has been cutting hair on Germantown Avenue. Recently several of his most loyal customers threw him and longtime hairdresser Maryam Lavasani a party to show their gratitude.

“This is so much more than a hair salon,” said Phoebe Griswold, a longtime customer and one of the party planners.

“It’s a meeting place,” added Lori Eckert, another of the party’s planners.

Griswold and Eckert came up with the idea to throw the party to give back to the man they say has brought so much to them and to the community over the years.

“The merchants do a lot for people,” Griswold said. “They hold the community together. We asked ourselves, ‘How can we give to them?’”

Ariumi, who would not reveal his age, describes himself as shy. He declined to discuss his background as a refugee. He was clear, however, in his appreciation for customers and those who helped him as a young man.

The young military wife and her husband, a physician, wanted a better life for Ariumi. They called friends of theirs in the states and asked if they would take in the young Japanese man who had become their friend.

Gross Painter and his wife, Gloria, were ideal candidates to house Ariumi. Gross was the owner of a beauty shop in Pottstown. Ariumi lived with the Painters for four years, working at the beauty shop.

“I’m his American dad,” said Gross at the party in the little shop at 8131 Germantown Ave.

“He came over here with $400 in his pocket,” Gloria said. “Just enough to get back home if he didn’t like it here.”

Ariumi, who never married and has no children, has remained close to the Painters. He recently took them to Paris for vacation.

According to Gross, Ariumi grew restless in Pottstown.

“He wanted a bigger city,” Gross said.

Ariumi originally left Pottstown after just six months. He moved to Alexander, Va., to work for a fellow Japanese immigrant who owned a beauty shop. On Dec. 31 of that year, he got a call from his lawyer telling him he had to move. Immigration was giving him a hard time, and so Ariumi went back to Pottstown.

“I had just gotten my driver’s license a week before,” he remembered. “I bought a junky 1968 Dodge.”

He drove the Dodge back to Pennsylvania, but with his English still dodgy, he drove for 10 hours before arriving at the Painters’.

“I didn’t know how to get from Virginia to Pennsylvania,” he said. “I know a little bit because I had come on the bus to visit.”

Norio knew he was lost. He knew the trip should take about four hours. He was afraid to stop and ask the police for help because he did not realize the police department was different from the immigration service. Ariumi laughs at the memory.

Twenty years ago, Lavasani was graduating from cosmetology school. She was born in Iran and left in 1985 for Paris where her brother Mohsen was living and working as a chef. Moshen is the owner of Shundeez, the Middle Eastern restaurant at the Top of the Hill plaza.

“It was during the war and we had to leave,” she said. “It was a time when Saddam was bombing Iran. It was horrible.”

Her mother, Mahin, had gone the year before. Her oldest brother, Mehdi, left in 1975, and came to Philadelphia to attend Spring Garden College.

“He was supposed to come back to work for an oil company,” she said. “But the revolution had started so he never came back.”

Lavasani spent three years in Paris with Mohsen before joining her mother and Mehdi in Philadelphia. Like Ariumi, Lavasani did not speak English when she moved here.

She arrived on Christmas Eve 1988 in New York. She remembers there was a red carpet and a band playing at the airport as she deplaned.

“My brother teased me that it was all for me,” she said.

The night after her arrival her brother told her he would take her to Paris so she would feel at home. He drove her to Chestnut Hill to go to the piano bar 21 West, behind the old Wawa on West Highland Avenue.

“I will never forget that night,” she said. “The cobblestone streets, the lights and the snow. It was beautiful.”

She was encouraged to go to school for hairdressing by a family friend who was also in the business and who told her it did not require much English. She found school frustrating. She had wanted to work in hospitality as a young woman in Tehran. She completed the 12-month course in nine months.

As she was finishing up, someone told her about a position at a hair salon in Chestnut Hill. Mehdi was already on the Hill, working as a manager at Chestnut Hill Village apartments, where she was living with her mother.

She had been working at her brother’s previous restaurant, the Persian Grill in Lafayette Hill on weekends. She graduated on March 1 and went to work at Norio’s on March 29.

“I love what I do,” she said of her profession. “I have a passion about my job.”

Lavasani said she was quiet at first, much like her boss.

“I was afraid to talk because of my English,” she said.

Ariumi’s language barrier did not stop him. He came to Chestnut Hill 28 years ago. Walking down the street, he came across a letter carrier and started speaking to him. He inquired if the letter carrier knew of any shops in the area that might be looking for a hairdresser. The letter carrier told him about a beauty shop that had just closed. Ariumi opened a few months later at 8024 Germantown Ave.

Ariumi said his business started picking up within three or four months.

“Thirty years ago not many people knew how to cut hair,” he said.

He was also selling pocketbooks in New York at the time. He started with $3,000 in his pocket, fell on some bad luck when someone stole from him, then moved to the corner of Hartwell Lane and Germantown Avenue before finding his current salon space.

“I’m really lucky,” he said. “I have good customers, everyone has been supportive.”