If I eat my hijiki, will my hair be black?

Random Factoid: In Japan kids are encouraged to eat their hijiki, (ヒジキ, 鹿尾菜, a black stringy seaweed) so their hair will be black.

So if I eat my hijiki will my hair turn black? Sometimes I wish for darker hair. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my natural hair color, and wear it proudly. But sometimes living in a country as homogeneous as Japan can get tiring. Living as a gaijin in Japan means that one is always conspicuous. There is never a question that you are a gaijin. A lot of times I don’t mind this so much. It is my excuse when I make myself like an idiot, I can always pull out the “dumb gaijin” card. It makes me unique, because although there are many other gaijin living here in Tokyo, we are still vastly outnumbered by the nihonjin living here (less than 2% of the population). The fact that I am so conspicuous, however, does get to me occasionally. Sometimes I tire of the staring, of the muttered comments about the (gasp!) gaijin, and of conversations about me held in front of my face because it is assumed I won’t understand. I get it, okay? I do look different, I do speak a different language (though I’m working on speaking yours!), and I do occasionally make some stupid cultural faux pas (probably more than I realize), but sometimes I look out across the sea of black glossy hair and I wish that my hijiki would start to work . . .