Hanzi Smatter has a good list of tattoos you could recommend your friend.

Otherwise I would go for "魔法的な猫".

Tattoos in general are ugly crap. Getting a trite phrase in a script you can't even read is ugly crap AND stupid. What makes 魔法的な猫 better than just getting MAGICAL CAT inked?

The only tattoos I can somewhat respect are traditional yak style tattoos by masters (they have actual artistic value instead of being some lame stencils), although I'd never get one (I can't imagine any design I wouldn't get tired of after a few decades of seeing it). Yakuza-owned women with the full body tattoos can be very erotic, but I'd never remotely want my girlfriend to get them.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:Some girl at my university sports a nifty "乱" tattoo. I'm afraid she might actually know what it means... never dared to ask.

It might be pleasant for you actually, so you should ask.
乱交

Some girl at my university sports a 庶 in the back of her neck.

Jarvik7 Wrote:It might be pleasant for you actually, so you should ask.
乱交

Are you kidding? Of course I would have asked.. if she was cute.

Of course, one can always suggest the 100+ strokes biang biang noodles kanji:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1069

I don't plan on getting a tattoo. Even more so since I plan to stay in Japan after I retire from the Navy in 4 years. Visible tattoos usually mean no water parks, some resorts and onsens. Why make my life there more difficult that it'll already be?

I am an advocate of not getting a tattoo unless it holds meaning to the person, and it does bother me to see so many Americans walking around with random kanji they got from google...but at the same time, who am I to say what a person should get placed on their body? But rather than a random proverb that looks cool, maybe he should pick a quote that holds a lot of meaning to him, be it a verse of poetry, or whatnot, and have the Japanese translation for the tattoo?

Katsuo Wrote:

hotkiller123 Wrote:A friend of mine wants to have a tattoo with a cool Japanese saying... he would like it if the saying contains complicated kanji (so not too many hiragana)... I actually also first thought of 弱肉強食　but my friend wanted something longer.

Here's 300 Japanese proverbs, originally from Nakayama Yukio's website. Perhaps your friend could choose a few that appeal from the English meaning, and then decide on one from the appearance of the Japanese text.

Before proceeding it might be an idea to look through the Hanzi Smatter website, which is well known for its critical look at garbled text used in tattoos (though I'm more struck by the visual ugliness of most efforts). Perhaps 木に竹を接ぐ written in cursive style might look good.

Thnx, this was more what I was looking for.

On a side note, I am curious if there are any Kanji that would be ok for a tattoo, but have a very awkward Hanzi meaning (or the other way around)?

Hmm, my favourite would simply be 十人十色. 猿も木から落ちる is kind of cool, too, and both are fairly easily explainable in English.

Love 夏炉冬扇. *Acquires new saying ^_^*

mezbup Wrote:http://www.bme.com/tattoo/A91005/high/jdfs-new.jpg

Education FTW.

Love it

captal Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:http://www.bme.com/tattoo/A91005/high/jdfs-new.jpg

Education FTW.

Love it

I'd get a tattoo like that and rock a tshirt like this http://www.bluebaldur.com/t-shirts/mp-t-...d_514.html

I was checking out RisoMiso page (and I was glad because he mentions Nuke's Tae Kim deck), and I learned "serious" tattooed people look down on kanji tattoos (which is also mentionned in this topic). Anyway, here's my contribution:
http://www.ratemyink.com/?action=ssp&pid=41556
I don't understand.

Bad idea.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19...itual.html

I saw a guy walking around the other day with トム・スミス across his entire arm.

I wept a little inside.

http://livedoor.2.blogimg.jp/blv42/imgs/...9bb766.jpg
This so far is the worst one I've ever seen...

masaman Wrote:http://livedoor.2.blogimg.jp/blv42/imgs/...9bb766.jpg
This so far is the worst one I've ever seen...

Maybe... if it's the only one you've seen.

That's probably the best one I've seen. It gets straight to the point using just 4 characters, and those characters are, in themselves, beautiful.

馬鹿外人

I love it.

トム・スミス sounds much worse to me.

And, of course, there's this kind of thing:
It's really just a string of random characters written incorrectly...

That, or some Chinese I don't know, but a Google search for the first few characters didn't turn anything up, so I'll go with the "random characters" hypothesis.

王我勇仁礼誠名誉忠 is the best I can make of it.

Well, good for you, Mr. King Self Courage Humanity Unrecognisable Character that Resembles Gratitude Sincerity Honor Loyalty.

hereticalrants Wrote:And, of course, there's this kind of thing: http://www.tattooartists.com/images/asia...ttoo-x.jpg
It's really just a string of random characters written incorrectly...

That, or some Chinese I don't know, but a Google search for the first few characters didn't turn anything up, so I'll go with the "random characters" hypothesis.

王我勇仁礼誠名誉忠 is the best I can make of it.

Well, good for you, Mr. King Self Courage Humanity Unrecognisable Character that Resembles Gratitude Sincerity Honor Loyalty.

Ouch, that one hurts my eyes :O
勇 仁 礼 誠 名誉 忠 are Samurai's, or ancient Chinese warriors', code of conduct though. But the font and style of it...

The meanings and the grammar of it is one thing, how it is rendered is another.

Wow, gotta love how it makes it look like 名誉 is a single kanji. Clearly done by someone mindlessly (but badly...) copying off something rather than understanding what they're writing.

masaman Wrote:勇 仁 礼 誠 名誉 忠 are Samurai's, or ancient Chinese warriors', code of conduct though.

Wait, I figured it out. It's just
義・勇・仁・礼・誠・名誉・忠義
With the first character stretched and missing the top two strokes so that it looks like 王 and 我, the last character out of view or ommited, 礼 being written with two strokes missing, and 名誉 squished together into one character.

That actually makes sense. I don´t know how they messed it up so bad, but it makes sense.

EDIT: Here it is in higher resolution. It is now possible to see that the first character does not, in fact, have the first two strokes ommited, but rather has had them moved to the middle, effectivly flipping the top half of the character upside down.

Here is an infinitely better rendered tatoo of the same thing http://seiza.ro/image/watermark/id/914/version/0

Personally I think it looks very nice with his pierced nipple!

hereticalrants Wrote:Here is an infinitely better rendered tatoo of the same thing http://seiza.ro/image/watermark/id/914/version/0

It's tribal and kanji in one! It just needs to be a tramp stamp to be the awful tattoo trifecta.

hereticalrants Wrote:

masaman Wrote:勇 仁 礼 誠 名誉 忠 are Samurai's, or ancient Chinese warriors', code of conduct though.

Wait, I figured it out. It's just
義・勇・仁・礼・誠・名誉・忠義
With the first character stretched and missing the top two strokes so that it looks like 王 and 我,

Oh, the 王 and 我 were actually 義! I couldn't figure that one out. Wow that's really hideous. I thought it at least meant something in Chinese. But I think this one takes the cake.



Well, its not really Kanji, but it's almost like a Japanese pictogram

I reckon that guy will be revered as a God if he ever goes to Japan

Seriously though, WTF - I'd love to him explain it..