Question:
I was wondering if any of you could answer some quick questions about tattoos for a friend of mine who doesn’t have access to the net. She is going to Tokyo, Japan for a few weeks and wants to get her first tattoo. She is very concerned about getting the work done in a place so unfamiliar. Is there anything I should warn her about or tell her to look for when she is there? (she told me she was especiallly concerned alot about sterility of the needles) Any help would be appreciated, Thanks in advance. Jon
Response:
I was wondering if any of you could answer some quick questions about tattoos for a friend of mine who doesn’t have access to the net. She is going to Tokyo, Japan for a few weeks and wants to get her first tattoo. She is very concerned about getting the work done in a place so unfamiliar. Is there anything I should warn her about or tell her to look for when she is there? (she told me she was especiallly concerned alot about sterility of the needles)
Your friend is not going to like my advice. My advice is "don’t bother". Tattooing in Japan is not out in the open, since the societal taboos against tattoos are still quite extreme. Because of this, it is difficult for Japanese to get tattoos. It is more difficult for a foreigner to get a tattoo in Japan, due to these restrictions (you cannot look up tattoo in the phone book, that is certain.) The other problem with getting a tattoo from a Japanese artist is that they tend towards big pieces, and unless you are foreign tattoo artist, they are much less likely to be willing to do anything short of a full body piece. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but… FWA
Response:
I was wondering if any of you could answer some quick questions about tattoos for a friend of mine who doesn’t have access to the net. She is going to Tokyo, Japan for a few weeks and wants to get her first tattoo. She is very concerned about getting the work done in a place so unfamiliar. Is there anything I should warn her about or tell her to look for when she is there? (she told me she was especiallly concerned about sterility of the needles) Your friend is not going to like my advice. My advice is "don’t bother". (stuff deleted)
Most disappointing. She will also be in Hong Kong the week before Japan, perhaps that may be a better choice, or does that fall into the same category? Again, thanks in advance.
Response:
I was wondering if any of you could answer some quick questions about tattoos for a friend of mine who doesn’t have access to the net. She is going to Tokyo, Japan for a few weeks and wants to get her first tattoo. Your friend is not going to like my advice. My advice is "don’t bother". Most disappointing. She will also be in Hong Kong the week before Japan, perhaps that may be a better choice, or does that fall into the same category?
In Hong Kong, tattoo parlors are quite open. Many display photographs of tattooed people in the window (mostly white sailors). However, I don’t know if they do Japanese-style tattoos. Also, I have absolutely no information on how clean they are, which artists are good, etc. Bill
Response:
: She is going to Tokyo, Japan for a few weeks and wants to get her first tattoo. Your friend is not going to like my advice. My advice is "don’t bother". Tattooing in Japan is not out in the open, since the societal taboos against tattoos are still quite extreme.
A friend of mine went to Japan with a freshly done tat & had problems over it. She was working (English teacher) in Japan for a year & wanted to get her first tat. Initially the plan was to have a Japanese tat, so it would be something different when she returned home. It proved *impossible* to have it done in Japan, but she was now so keen on the idea that she had one done back in the UK on her mid-year return trip. Landing back in Japan, with a day old & obviously fresh tat visible on her arm, Japanese customs & immigration went ape-shit ! *BIG* hassles, baggage searching, hours of delays, phone calls to her boss about the unsuitability of this person to be working in a Japanese school. Even after her boss had called to pick her up from the airport & sworn that she was a respectable schoolteacher, not a gangster, there were problems. Many of the staff who had been friendly before were now distinctly aloof. The Japanese pupils loved it BTW ! 
Both our friends are women, but my impression is that the Japanese social freak-out would be just as bad for a man, as a woman. Oh, the story has a happy ending. She came home through Singapore & had both labia pierced 8-)
Response:
I am looking at getting my first tat around the end of this month and would appriciate getting some comparisons on artists in the Seattle area. The design is primarily a stylized almost art-deco bird with some gradiated color shadings. I am familiar with Lamar, (she did my piercings), and would be interested in seeing how she rates in this sort of work with other local artists. Question two, (pardon me for a moment while I drain out your experience 
, I have a female friend who wants to get her nipples pierced and is curious as to whether or not this will interfer with later breast feeding, (for an infant, not her). Assuming the piercing can be managed without causing irreperable damage, should she let the piercer know at the time that she eventually intends to breast feed? i.e. will the peircer need to do the piercing in some different way. Responses appriciated, looking forward to joining the ranks of the permanently decorated "Meltdown, annoying buzzword. We prefer to * Maelstrom – The Simpsons *
Response:
Landing back in Japan, with a day old & obviously fresh tat visible on her arm, Japanese customs & immigration went ape-shit ! *BIG* hassles, baggage searching, hours of delays, phone calls to her boss about the unsuitability of this person to be working in a Japanese school. Even after her boss had called to pick her up from the airport & sworn that she was a respectable schoolteacher, not a gangster, there were problems. Many of the staff who had been friendly before were now distinctly aloof.
The Japanese associate tattoos with the Yakuza, and it is assumed that anyone with tats is a gangster. *So*, the reaction makes sense in that respect, but seems odd to us enlightened Americans, who associate tats with mere undesirables like rock stars and sailors Similarly (ENTER PEDANT MODE), Yakuza members tend to lose finger joints as they rise in the organization (according to folklore, anyway), so if you are missing fingers, you *might* be looked at with some suspicion. (EXIT PEDANT MODE) — Digital Transmission Systems, Inc., Duluth GA Member, DTS Dart Team | Position: Goalie | cat * | fgrep -v "signature virus"
Response:
The Japanese associate tattoos with the Yakuza, and it is assumed that anyone with tats is a gangster. *So*, the reaction makes sense in that respect, but seems odd to us enlightened Americans, who associate tats with mere undesirables like rock stars and sailors
This is true, however, there are also certain professions in which the men sometimes sport full body tattoos (I’ve forgotten now exactly which professions they are; mostly manual labor jobs which were traditionally passed from generation to generation.). But I *think* the primary reason that tattoos are generally looked down on in Japan is that tattooing is an attepmt to ’set oneself apart’, rather than to blend in; traditionally, this is thought to be impolite. (In japan, being impolite is a grave sin). So one with tattoos is a rebel or outlaw, which, in traditional japanese society, is a very, VERY bad thing to be. It’s really quite interesting; the society that really developed the tattoo as a higher art form is also the society that places the greatest social stigma on it! There are ‘tattooed men’ clubs common in Japan for those who do sport the full body suits; you often see pictures of meetings in tattoo books; usually shots of men in loin cloths drinking or smoking, or in comunal baths…. Another interesting japanese tattoo fact; among the havily tattooed in japan, one with less than the full body suit is looked down on; the slang phrase they use for such people translates as someting like ‘Half man’. They view partial tattoos with considerable derision. Similarly (ENTER PEDANT MODE), Yakuza members tend to lose finger joints as they rise in the organization (according to folklore, anyway), so if you are missing fingers, you *might* be looked at with some suspicion. (EXIT PEDANT MODE)
Actually, the story is that, when a Yakuza member is dishonored in some way, he must attone by chopping off a joint of one of his own fingers. It’s sort of a downsized ‘Seppuku’ or ritual suicide. -Karl(Mr Informative Today) Sun Microsystems, Milpitas, CA (The armpit of Silicon Valley) Steed: VT1100C Cage: Who Cares? DoD#1999 -I don’t speak for Sun, and they don’t speak for Me- "My beloved Mady and I might go looking for mom, to see if she would drive us to the rec center to to ask if we could bake cookies or to see if she’d give us some money, and we’d find her out in the backyard shaking her fists at the sky, calling God a retard or a cheese-dick." From ‘All New People’ by Anne Lamott
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Landing back in Japan, with a day old & obviously fresh tat visible on her arm, Japanese customs & immigration went ape-shit ! *BIG* hassles, baggage searching, hours of delays, phone calls to her boss about the unsuitability of this person to be working in a Japanese school. Even after her boss had called to pick her up from the airport & sworn that she was a respectable schoolteacher, not a gangster, there were problems. Many of the staff who had been friendly before were now distinctly aloof. The Japanese associate tattoos with the Yakuza, and it is assumed that anyone with tats is a gangster. *So*, the reaction makes sense in that respect, but seems odd to us enlightened Americans, who associate tats with mere undesirables like rock stars and sailors Similarly (ENTER PEDANT MODE), Yakuza members tend to lose finger joints as they rise in the organization (according to folklore, anyway), so if you are missing fingers, you *might* be looked at with some suspicion. (EXIT PEDANT MODE)
Readers of rab might also be interested to know another practice of the yakuza, which is to sew pearls under the skin of the head of the penis, presumably to enhance the pleasure they give to their lovers. -Jim "shouldn’t this thread be cross-posted to afu?" Macklow
Response:
Readers of rab might also be interested to know another practice of the yakuza, which is to sew pearls under the skin of the head of the penis, presumably to enhance the pleasure they give to their lovers.
i thought the deal with that was a pearl was sewn into the penis for each year a yakuza member spent in prison. but then again i could be wrong. pogo — `At least your parents talk about Big Things. I try and talk about things like nuclear issues that matter to me with my parents and it’s like I’m speaking Bratislavan. They listen indulgently to me for an appropriate length of time, and then after I’m out of wind, they ask me why I live in such a God-forsaken place like the Mojave Desert and how my love life is. Give parents just the tiniest of confidences and they’ll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective. Sometimes I’d just like to mace them. I want to tell them that I envy their upbringings that were so clean, so free of futurelessness. And I want to throttle them for blithely handing over the world to us like so much skid-marked underwear.’ -Generation X Doug Coupland
Response:
Question two, (pardon me for a moment while I drain out your experience , I have a female friend who wants to get her nipples pierced and is curious as to whether or not this will interfer with later breast feeding, (for an infant, not her). Assuming the piercing can be managed without causing irreperable damage, should she let the piercer know at the time that she eventually intends to breast feed? i.e. will the peircer need to do the piercing in some different way.
This should probably be in the FAQ if it isn’t already. As I understand it (and this is *not* a medical opinion, and you probably should get one) there are a number of lactiferous ducts, making the nipple somewhat more like, say, a sponge, rather than a tube. The upshot of this is that, unless you get a monstrously large piercing, you shouldn’t block very many of the ducts, if any at all. So you should be fine. Of course, during the course of the actual breast-feeding, you’ll have to decide whether to leave the jewelry in or out. | The art of life lies in taking pleasures Debbie Chachra | as they pass, and the keenest pleasures | moral. -Aristippus
Response:
bad experience with japanese reaction to tattoos deleted.. Both our friends are women, but my impression is that the Japanese social freak-out would be just as bad for a man, as a woman.
I am fairly sure that this is true, I was talking to one of our Japanese managers about tattoos (with regards to getting some good japanese calligraphy done) and he was very, very intense about the problems which I might be making for myself, especially as the japanese characters were a name, although I didnt find out exactly what he was worried about me or the person I was asking for dropping ourselves into. He was quite certain that it was something no-one who wasn’t already involved with an organisation similar to the Mafia would want. Oh well. Oh, the story has a happy ending. She came home through Singapore & had both labia pierced 8-)
Goody goody, I hope she is happy there and also with the tat.
Mary — +1 510 652 6200 x 124
Response:
[ me here ] Similarly (ENTER PEDANT MODE), Yakuza members tend to lose finger joints as they rise in the organization (according to folklore, anyway), so if you are missing fingers, you *might* be looked at with some suspicion. (EXIT PEDANT MODE) Actually, the story is that, when a Yakuza member is dishonored in some way, he must attone by chopping off a joint of one of his own fingers. It’s sort of a downsized ‘Seppuku’ or ritual suicide.
That’s what I was getting at, in a round-abbout way. Guess I need to polish up my pedant. — Digital Transmission Systems, Inc., Duluth GA Member, DTS Dart Team | Position: Goalie | cat * | fgrep -v "signature virus"
Response:
Readers of rab might also be interested to know another practice of the yakuza, which is to sew pearls under the skin of the head of the penis, presumably to enhance the pleasure they give to their lovers.
I’d heard of that before. As its one of the few male-mods that appeals to me (Prince Albert – Yeeuch !), any more information on it ?
Response:
Readers of rab might also be interested to know another practice of the yakuza, which is to sew pearls under the skin of the head of the penis, presumably to enhance the pleasure they give to their lovers. I’d heard of that before. As its one of the few male-mods that appeals to me (Prince Albert – Yeeuch !), any more information on it ?
Check out the Modern Primitives issue of RE/Search. They’ve even got a picture, I believe! — Steve Schochet Free Association Can Be Abusive
Response:
Readers of rab might also be interested to know another practice of the yakuza, which is to sew pearls under the skin of the head of the penis, presumably to enhance the pleasure they give to their lovers. Check out the Modern Primitives issue of RE/Search. They’ve even got a picture, I believe!
Nope, M.P. has a drawing, not a photo. standard disclaimer, etc., ad nauseum "Bletch. Gurgle. Retch. Gasp." – George Bush
Response:
[ me here ] Similarly (ENTER PEDANT MODE), Yakuza members tend to lose finger joints as they rise in the organization (according to folklore, anyway), so if you are missing fingers, you *might* be looked at with some suspicion. (EXIT PEDANT MODE) Actually, the story is that, when a Yakuza member is dishonored in some way, he must attone by chopping off a joint of one of his own fingers. It’s sort of a downsized ‘Seppuku’ or ritual suicide.
This is most definitely true, as the federal customs agents look for this regularly here at the Honolulu airport. If you a digit short, expect to get a thorough check (that’s if you look Japanese). — A. Lani Teshima, (future) Famous Librarian–an oxymoron o | /_/_/ "Sea Hare"
Response:
bad experience with japanese reaction to tattoos deleted.. I am fairly sure that this is true, I was talking to one of our Japanese managers about tattoos (with regards to getting some good japanese calligraphy done) and he was very, very intense about the problems which I might be making for myself, especially as the japanese characters were a name, although I didnt find out exactly what he was worried about me or the person I was asking for dropping ourselves into. He was quite certain that it was something no-one who wasn’t already involved with an organisation similar to the Mafia would want. Oh well.
Even my very open-minded mother was somewhat concerned when she found out I got inked (just a small one on my left shoulder blade). She made an off-handed remark that went something like, "You’ll have trouble going to the public bath houses if you ever go back to Japan." This of course, is because I LOOK Japanese. If I were occidental looking, my appearance would cause enough of a stir without any tattoos. In a society where "the nail that sticks out must be hammered down," tattoos are a big no-no. Had I gotten tattooed while I was still in Japan, I would’ve been able to say goodbye to "a proper marriage and being a proper mother to proper Japanese children" because of the stigma attached. There is a very erotic, taboo thing about tattooed Japanese women, though. I remember seeing calendars of Japanese tattooed women in Japan a long time ago. People would never openly say they "like" it, though. By the way, there is a very famous Japanese short story about a tattoo master who kidnaps a woman to illustrate her, and after she’s tattooed she becomes this real sensuous, powerful being…I can’t remember the title of it for the life of me. Maybe somebody else does. If not, I’ll try to dig it up. I liked the story a lot, and it was considered classic Japanese literature, since it was a piece I covered in an advanced Japanese lit class a few years ago. — A. Lani Teshima, (future) Famous Librarian–an oxymoron o | /_/_/ "Sea Hare"
Response:
Categories: Japanese Tattoo | 
No Comments »
)… Jeff Dauber asked what exactly I was looking for specifically as far as Jap tatts go. Well, I know a top quality artist and am looking for a little content inspiration, I’d like to draw my tatt myself and need some good visual references of japanese art, existing japanese tatts, etc. Anything you can give me, book names, mag names and addresses, whatever, would be *highly* appreciated. Also, Jeff, the names and contact info of any of the east coast artists with a rep for good Jap work that you mentioned would make me *real* happy. Thanks again. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Matt Balara "It’s not my planet monkey boy!" ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: — The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service. internet: bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80