Does getting your ears pierced hurt?

Introduction

I got my left earlobe pierced.
I thought my impressions might be useful for anyone thinking about getting a piercing, so I’m writing them up here.

This time I didn’t use a piercing gun on myself — I went to a clinic and had it done for me.

I went to Clinic Bizarrea, near Sakae Station in Nagoya.
Website
They have what they call a “Piercing Center,” and it’s a place that comes up almost without fail when you search for clinics to get pierced at in Nagoya.

What stands out here is how cheap it is: one earlobe piercing, starter earring included, cost me 1,600 yen.
A piercing gun at Don Quijote runs about 1,000 yen, so for roughly 600 yen more you get to consult someone and have them do it for you — an incredible deal.

You can also choose from a variety of starter earrings, so you can have something a bit stylish in from the very beginning.

That said, if you look up reviews of the Piercing Center, there are both good and bad ones — the staff seem to vary from day to day, and so does the service.
Basically the piercing itself is done assembly-line style, so there isn’t much room for the service to be good or bad, but it might matter when you want to discuss where to place the piercing.

Getting pierced

From arriving at the Piercing Center to actually being pierced took about 20 minutes in total.

I checked in, picked out an earring, and got a brief explanation.
I already knew my earlobes were fairly thick, but it’s surprisingly hard to tell how thick they are compared with other people’s.
That matters because people with thick earlobes have to watch the size when using an over-the-counter piercing gun.

This Piercing Center has long-type starter earrings for people with thick earlobes, which is reassuring.
Sure enough, mine were on the thick side, so I ended up with a long-type earring.

Once I’d chosen an earring, they handed me a marker and asked me to look in the mirror and mark where I wanted the piercing.

Marking the spot yourself while looking in a mirror is surprisingly hard, and my mark ended up pretty haphazard.
Earlobes are floppy, and the angle means you’re drawing with your arm bent, so your hand isn’t steady at all. How does everyone manage this…?

Haphazard as it was, apparently it was good enough — they disinfected the spot, counted 3, 2, 1, and punched it through.
No numbing or icing, just straight to it.
It was like bungee jumping, where once you’re on the platform things move along briskly so you don’t have time to get scared. Whether that’s to keep you from getting nervous or just for efficiency, I couldn’t say.

Afterward they checked the placement, and once I said it looked fine, I was free to go.
It really was over quickly and smoothly.

So how much does a piercing actually hurt?

For the record, the moment of piercing hurt quite a bit, and I could feel the needle passing through my earlobe.
Who was it that said getting pierced doesn’t hurt?

It kept hurting moderately for about two hours afterward, and after that there was a persistent odd sensation.
People used to wearing earrings probably wouldn’t mind that much, but as someone who almost never wears them, even that bothered me a fair bit.

The pain was a dull ache, entirely bearable.
Touching the earring doesn’t hurt, and water doesn’t sting when I shower, which I’m grateful for.

I suspect the reason the needle hurt as much as it did in my case is the thickness of my earlobes.
So if your earlobes are thin, it may genuinely not hurt at all.

Either way, it only hurts in that moment, and it’s easy to put up with when you think about the accessories you’ll get to enjoy afterward. Once it’s done, you just think
“Oh! It’s done!” — and all the dread you felt beforehand vanishes.

I’m looking forward to thinking about which earrings to wear from here on.

I want to take proper care of it so it doesn’t get infected.