Gel nails and apocalyptic girl talk

How did it come to this?

The last few times I've been home, I've gotten hooked on manicures. They only last a week at best before the chipping starts, but it doesn't matter so much when they're about the price of lunch at a deli. Here, a regular manicure still starts to look shabby after a few days but costs more like dinner for two at a neighborhood diner. Gel nails, simple or covered in gems, are more on par with a tasting menu at a fancy restaurant. However, they harden like formica after a few seconds under UV light and last until you go back to get them sandblasted off. Salons get you in the door with steep discounts for your first gel appointment. The model is flawed: they all offer the cut rates, including 'free removal of another shop's work,' but no incentive to stay once you're there. There's not much reason not to go nail-hopping and use this first-time discount every time. So at my boss' urging, I tried one introductory offer, and then another, and here we are, with glitter and "holograms," little silver disks that look like stones but are flat.
I used an app called Nails Cafe to find a little place hidden behind a rental car garage near Shinjuku Station. The woman looked like a classical violinist and was friendly but not overly inquisitive. I looked at the customer tipped back in a recliner a few feet away getting eyelashes glued with pointy tweezers to her eyelids, one hair at a time, and asked if they had had customers during the earthquake. She said that by chance they hadn't. Then she brought up the latest scientific gossip in the back of everyone's minds: the revised likelihood of a big quake hitting Tokyo head-on in the next few years. "If that happens, you know, everyone in Shinjuku will just die." She paused to look at the edge she'd filed on my nail and moved to the next one. "It won't be from the tall buildings collapsing, although the smaller, older ones probably will," she said, "It will be from the falling glass."
Next nail. "The glass in the skyscraper area will all shatter and fall and cut right through anyone who's outside."
She compared three nails at once and moved on.
"So it's better to stay inside?" I asked.
"Yes. Except," she said, picking up a fluffy brush to dust them off, "the third and fourth floors. The third and fourth floors get crushed flat. That's what happened in Kobe. Other hand, please."
I asked if that was true.
"I saw  it on TV. The first and second floors were stronger, and the floors above stayed intact, but for some reason, the third and fourth were just obliterated. What floor do you live on, by the way?"
I told her the eighth, and she said, "See? You'll be okay, then."
"Really? Even if the bottom floors are destroyed?" I asked, as she finished filing the second hand.
"Well, probably not," she smiled.