katanka

These two photos were posted in BMEzine's gallery with caption of "katanka".


http://www.bmeink.com/A70611/high/bmepb536572.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70611/high/bmepb536571.jpg

I have no idea what exactly these characters' significance with each other.

"Fuck, Everyone!"

"Fuck, Everyone!" is exactly what this June 11th photo's caption said.


http://www.bmeink.com/A70611/high/bmepb537412.jpg

Don't forget to thank the artist:

Luke "Strycknine" Davison, "Drag'in Ink,Dermagraphics", San Pablo Bay-Area,California.

Dragon Bender

http://www.bmeink.com/A70604/high/bmepb530557.jpg

This June 4th tattoo was posted in BMEzine's gallery with caption of:

"Dragon" by Stephanie Campbell, Dragon FX, Kingsway, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Don't forget to check out Dragon FX's introduction movie, where it says:

"Whether you are getting a tattoo or piercing, you can be confident that our staff would go out of their way to serve your needs. After all, you are going to be wearing our work and we want you to be proud of it."

Oliver's Chinese Arm Tattoo

My friend Alan writes:

Hi Tian,

I think www.rankmytattoos.com is a gold mine of silly Chinese and Japanese tattoos. Check out this one:

http://www.rankmytattoos.com/Virginia/Fredericksburg/5556.html

You will notice that it says (from top to bottom):

銭

ぶく

あ

痛い

恋

At first, it looks like just random gibberish, until you realize that it was actually all tattooed in inverted order, bottom to top rather than top to bottom!

I think it was supposed to mean “Love Hurts” followed by “Easy Money."

The silly client or tattooist must have just looked in a Japanese dictionary and found the words “love” (恋), “hurt” (痛い) and “easy money” (あぶく銭, also written 泡銭) and then strung them all together, grammar be damned, breaking the text in strange places and, to top it all off, tattooed the characters in the wrong order.

All in all, it is a piece de resistance of ludicrous, terrible Japanese tattoo work, although the characters themselves are correct and written well.

Thanks for all the hard work as usual.

Alan

hack0si's Tattoo

An anonymous tip has led me to hack0si's tattoo in www.rankmytattoos.com.

Photo has been removed on behalf of owner's request, original is located here:
http://www.rankmytattoos.com/Oregon/Eugene/11512.html

Under tattoo design details, it says:

100% freehand work done by Adam Lunt of Eugene Oregon. About 3 hours, one smoke break, and a few days of the lovely stinging sensation that reminds me my newest piece of art is healing. I would like the Kanji rated, and how the color contrasts the black, since my skin is pale and a perfect palette. PEACE

However, one commenter named "Bob" has summed up the whole thing in the following:

Well... This is supposed to read 善惡, "zen'aku," or "good and evil." There are mistakes in the way both of them are written, but the big problem with this tattoo is that the first character is upside-down. Sorry. And there's really no way to fix that. And the sadder thing is, you probably can't even sue. A skilled artist might be able to do a cover up....

"Beware of the Bull Rat"

Two of BMEzine's May 21st entries were from "Lil Miss Strange" with the caption of

"First Tattoo I Did On Someone Wo Is Neither Me Or Family And Doesnt Do It As A Joke
Good I Was Scared But The Guy Is Happy With It!
(Turnhout, Belgium)"

http://www.bmeink.com/A70521/high/bmepb523679.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70521/high/bmepb523678.jpg

By a strange coincidence, the tattooed phrase 畏牯鼠 means "beware of the bull rat".

We should all thank this young man for doing a public service announcement with his flesh.

Dice-K Dictionary

My friend Mark of pinyin.info sent me an article titled "Dice-K Dictionary" in recent issue of The Phoenix, an alternative newspaper in Boston area.

The article pointed out due to the popularity of Japanese baseball player Daisuke Matsuzaka (松坂 大輔), joining Boston Red Sox, many signs with Japanese have been spawning up around Boston area.

The article's author, Mike Miliard, contacted Momo Shinzawa, a fine-art photographer from Tokyo to help translate some of these signs.

In one of their examples,


http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid40133.aspx (114KB pdf)

Shinzawa said:

“Oh, this is really good one! The first three letters says ‘Red Sox’ (literately means ‘Red color sox’) which is kind of okay, but everybody knows Red Sox as Red Sox. You know what I mean? We pronounce and used the name of the team just like Bostonian, so this is kind of funny. On top of it, I think they try to say “Red Sox Fans” but, the last two letters literately means ‘an army corps,’ not ‘fan.’ I can see this sign was made by someone who speak Chinese, maybe? Who can not write [Japanese characters] Hiragana and katakana. When we use foreign words, we use Katakana. So the word ‘Red Sox’ or ‘fan’ should be all Katakana, not in Chinese letters. So this is my suspicious. Yeah, it is kind of No, No to call Japanese ‘An Army corps of red color sox?!’ Since [the Japanese were] Americans enemies long time ago!? I found this sign kind of funny! If Japanese see it, they can understand what they are trying to say. It is almost there, but not right Japanese.”

Actually if the characters shown above are be read as Chinese, it would translate as "Army group under red/bare boots". 赤 could be translated as either "red" or "bare" depending on the context.

The correct Chinese translation for Boston Red Sox is 波士頓紅襪(隊).