Miami Ink - Weathering the Storm

Reader Wendy has tipped me about an episode of Miami Ink broadcasted earlier this year titled “Weathering the Storm”.


video: 16 MB Windows Media, mirror

In the show, a young lady wanted a “Japanese sign of Happiness or Inner Peace”, but what she and her friend downloaded from the internet was incorrect.

Chris Nunez then chimes in: “I think the single biggest crime is that there are so many tattoos on people either totally fake or doesn’t mean what they are looking for.” He then went on about how great it is to have Yojiro "Yoji" Harada in the shop to keep a watchful eye on fraudulent Kanji clients bring in.

Oh really?

Here is a screen shot of Kanji book in Miami Ink, and how come Yoji never spotted this?



時 by itself alone is not “stylish”, it means “time, season; era, age, period”.

Chuck's Tattoos

* Photo removed on behalf of Chuck Smith's request *
* The original photo can be found in BMEzine.com *

Chuck posted a photo of his tattoos in BMEzine's gallery on Nov. 6.

My Daughters Name In Chinesse
(Dragon Done By Ron At Stormi Steele; Lettering Done By Scott, Stormi Steele, Kingston, Pa)

It looks like Chuck got suckered into believing English alphabet can be translated directly into Chinese characters. Or, perhaps his daughter's name is really 女康流, which means "woman healthy flow".

"It means 'Eternity'"

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A61023/high/bmepb379272.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A61023/high/bmepb379271.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A61023/high/bmepb379270.jpg

These three photos were posted in BMEzine's Kanji tattoo gallery on Oct. 30, 2006, with the caption of:

It Means "Eternity". Muster Said. I Don't Know Exactly, But Any Way. Whatever.
(by Sheremetyev, Golden Dragon, Omsk, Russia)

Since all three of the photos had date stamp on them and they appeared correctly, it was clear that the character been tattooed was mirrored. Also, the character 選 does not mean "eternity", it means "[to] choose" or "select".

Hanzi Vigilante Blogger

For the last two weeks of October, I was in Montreal, Canada. While I was there, a friend of mine has sent me link to a story published in the Vancouver Sun titled "More Skin, Less Ink" by Paula Brook.

The story is about people's regrets of their own tattoos. Of course with that, yours truly was mentioned.

I laughed so hard when I read the part where Ms. Brook referred me as:

Hanzi Vigilante Blogger

I am thinking about making some business cards with that title.

On the other hand, the term "vigilante blogger" makes me feel like the character with dual personalities of Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Or, Jan and Peter in The Edukators (Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei).

The original Vancouver Sun's story is here, here is a pdf copy of it, and for those who are too lazy to read, mp3 version of the article are also available here and here.

Caressing Flaw

Two weeks ago, I got an email from another U. S. Navy recruiter (I really think U. S. Navy should present me some kind of honorary award for my service) requesting tattoo translation. This young recruit got what he thought was "MC" tattooed on his chest.




The two characters 摸 and 疵 are pronounced as "mo" and "ci" in Chinese. Perhaps that is where he or the tattooist got the correlation to "M" and "C".

However, the second character is missing a small vertical stroke. Ironically, the literal translation of the two characters is "caressing flaw".