This is my favourite. 痔 means haemorrhoid. Presumably it was meant to say 侍, samurai.
Why would you presume that? Maybe they’re suffering and trying to raise awareness.
Maybe he's a 痔 侍, haemorrhoid samurai, bringing awareness and defending those with inflamed bottoms
This sounds like a plot straight from Gintama.
...It really does. Especially with the amount of word play Gintama uses frequently (Kanji play in this case? Not sure if it's a 'they just look similar written down' thing or actually a verbal play too. I won't pretend to know the word for hemorrhoids in Japanese LMAO)
Man, I miss Gintama.
Season 2: Ronin prolapsus
Because their radicals are really similar.
"The Way of the Samurai lies in devoting one's body and soul to one's anus." -Hagakure
mmmm sweet sweet 痔
Samurrhoid
I mean we can probably all visualize the person who had that tattoo and "foreign pervert" probably fits them perfectly.
straightens fedora; leans on sheathed katana like a cane, from underneath a long trenchcoat
AKSHUALLY…
To be fair, those kind of mean the same thing
And honestly a pretty hillarious phrase to tattoo when some white foreigner rolls up asking for a "Lover of Asian Beauty" tattoo.
Where I live, we get a number of used vehicles imported from Japan, and for a while it was trendy to have English slogans on vehicles.
They frequently made little sense, I imagine our ones look the same to them.
You wouldn't happen to remember any would you? For some reason I love those "Why is a mouse when it spins? The higher the fewer." type things.
I was having difficulty understanding my Chinese boss one day, and after the third time I asked in total confusion, "What?" He looked at me and asked, "Why you not understand me, am I no speaking English?" I cracked us both up with my reply of, "No, you're clearly speaking Chinglish!"
Her: I am struggling with two words.
Me: Ok.
Her: Fuck and fuck.
Me: umm
Her: the first one is like a thing for eating a meal.
Me: Oh! Ok "fork" is what you eat with and "fuck" is what you do in private or yell when something goes wrong.
Her: Say it again.
(Multiple minutes later of me saying fork and fuck)
Her: So I eat with a for-K and f-U-ck in private.
Me: You got it, now go and fork yourself.
(Me getting hit with a pillow multiple times while laughing)
I have this sort of thing all the time here in Spain, though with shit/sheet.
There's plenty going the other way too, of course. At least I don't mistake miedo and mierda these days ...
One time I misremembered my Japanese teacher's mnemonic and wrote that my grandpa was married to noodles.
Teacher told us grandma is sofu because she has a sore foot from kicking grandpa's ass. I remembered it as sore bum instead, and changed grandma to soba
Sofu (祖父) is grandpa. Sobo (祖母) is grandma, which is even closer to soba.
Damn, I still cannot get that mnemonic right
I'm well aware, but thank you.
I need more. MORE!
Not OP but the Toyota MR2 had the following text on the rear window on some units:
Mature sporty personal
More innovation more adult
A man in dandism
Powered midship specialty
Lol those are great, thank you.
I'm trying to remember some of them, or find a photo. I can't remember what model of vehicle they were though.
Wasn't a tattoo, but a motorcycle decal. This dude had a Kawasaki crotch rocket with five kanji characters on it. Posted it to a forum, and this weeb says "lol where'd you get that?" dude answers all defensively "From the mall, why?" Weeb says "It says pig bird pig lizard dog." "No dude, it says N-I-N-J-A." He thought kanji characters translated directly to the latin alphabet.
豕
鳥
豕
蜴
犬
Damn, I kinda wanna play my English ninja wkth the Japanese word for ninja. But I do not want to end up like that.
Wait did the characters look like the letters for ninja or was it the (I’m assuming Japanese) equivalent of the letter n then I and so on
I don't precisely remember, I'm recalling a forum post I read at least a decade ago, but I do recall that he had at least tried to literally translate the letters "NINJA" to Asian text beyond just picking some McDojo font. I don't know if he had attempted to find kanji characters that looked relatively like latin letters or if someone convinced him that "This one means N" or something.
Not really related, but a couple of years ago in my home country, a Western bloke was actually pictured on the internet wearing a shirt that said something like "白人很笨" (white people are stupid).
Some of us buy those ironically though. I had a shirt that said (and I unfortunately cannot put it in kana/Kanji atm) something very close to, in full kana and kanji: "I am a stupid American. I'll buy anything."
I knee fully what it meant because the sentence was pretty easy, but I still wanted to travel to Japan wearing it.
Kinda want to get one in english now.
I imagine you were quite first impression popular with the local vendors!
Well I mean it's not wrong. Everybody's stupid, it's just a matter of quantity and context.
There's a great website documenting this. I'm surprised no one has linked to it.
She wanted it to promote and celebrate her latest single, 7 Rings.
Instead it is referencing to a type of Japanese charcoal cooking grill.
This one is great because those are literally the characters for "7" and "ring" but if you put them next to each other they mean "portable charcoal grill". Luckily it was an easy fix. An additional character was added and it now reads "7 rings" as intended.
It's kinda still messed up, even with the additional characters because you read right to left with vertical writing, and technically it should have a つ after the 7.
I have a friend that has Thai writing tattooed on his leg that translates to "I love chicken soup."
I think when he was drunk he went into a tattoo parlor thinking it was a restaurant.
Thats awesome
I've seen a few Sanskrit ones. Nothing drastic in real life, thankfully. I find the Chinese ones much more hilarious.
Had a friend in college legit get ancient Chinese calligraphy. Absolutely beautiful. But my international center buddy told me separately it just meant window. It was supposed to be this heavenly view or some such thing. No. It was window.
Why not? I got Vete a la Mierda tattooed on my arm when I was young and still learning Spanish. Occasionally, I've had the great opportunity to pull my sleeve up.
What does that mean
"Fuck off"
Literally "Go to the shit"
It means “Fuck You” and maybe some other things depending on context.
I saw a pic that supposedly said "egg fried rice". I wouldn't even be mad
A French women got an English tattoo. The two sentences were full of your/you're and it's/its mistakes.
That's typically more of a native speaker error, but I guess it could happen.
That's pretty slopppy
Hentai Gaijin
Foreign Transformer?
Franky is that you‽
A friend of mine wanted a tattoo in french, she speaks it but not fluently, I found a quote for her that she loved, she transcribed it to paper to bring it to the tattoo artist... I think she transcribed it from memory because she made a mistake in the text and I never had the heart to tell her (small word missing or something like that)... And it's a very long quote in a straight line on her vertebral column, so it's not easy to hide if she wears something more revealing...
When I was a kid I remember a clothing store getting in trouble because it was selling underpants with an artistic Arabic lettering design. They hadn't checked what it said, but it turned out to say "There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet." Having this on underpants didn't please anyone.
1 man with menstruation tattooed on his neck
How many Chinese people and places have mistranslated a word into English as "fuck?" I can't remember which word it is, some kind of food. So ya'know, glass houses and all that.
Obligatory do not go to a tattoo parlor and ask them to tattoo something derogatory in their native language as a joke. At worst you'll severely offend them and at best they'll be extremely reluctant to do it because it could get them in serious trouble and thrash their reputation. I promise you it's nowhere near as funny as the internet would have you believe and it won't be taken well by a vast majority of tattoo artists.
Reminds me of XiaomaNYC intentionally getting chicken noodle soup to make the folks in china town crack up
The Chinese characters / text is 变態外人
(romanized "biàn tài wàirén")
Interestingly, Japanese uses the same characters for hentai, 変態. Tai is notably pronounced the same / similarly, while biàn / hen are different.
I will likely never get a tattoo. But I know there are lots of reasons to get tattoos, and it seems to me that the vast majority of people not only don't regret but feel good about the tattoos they get. So I dunno, sleep on it, but go ahead and get a tattoo if you really want.
I've only got one on my inner wrist but it makes me so happy when I see it.
That's a very odd thing to get tattooed..I love it! heads straight to the local tattoo shop
Why? Are you allergic to fun or something?
It's so weird, for over 30 years it didn't make sense to me, until all of a sudden I knew what I wanted and it just clicked? One thigh and calf piece later and I'm addicted. I get nothing but compliments during shorts season and the Leo in me lives for that shit.
Same, first 20 years of my life I disliked the idea of tattoos and thought I'd never, ever get any. Turns out all that was just society pushing puritan ideas on me and I just had to get over that.
Yeah tattoos are the shit! They make these meat bags we're all trapped in more bearable. My tattoos are my favorite part about me
It does feel nice to embrace your body, and like, make it more "your own". It's kinda like expressing your autonomy over it.
If you live in Japan you might want to avoid tattoos unless you want to be banned from all water parks and most hotsprings.
This is one of the few situations where I can say good thing I'm American lol
Yep. My tattoos have no meanings to anyone but myself, and there's no way that my 6'3" 220lb white ass would ever be confused for a Japanese person. I don't need to "say" a damn thing. They can tell I'm ガイジン just by looking at me.
I still remember my first trip to Asia and being noticed everywhere. Was telling a friend of mine later "oh that must be how minorities and attractive women feel all the time but still kinda better". There is just no way to blend in if you are a white-arab dude in a city that is +99% a specific east Asian ethnic group. I tried dressing like a local, I put on my blank New Yorker facial expression, didn't speak much, but nothing worked. Everyone was doing doubletakes and kids/old people were openly looking.
For real? Whats the reasoning?
Tattoos are associated with criminals, particularly the yakuza, afaik.
I'm almost tempted to get full body art of the Jojo rumble kana to see if one of the guards starts up, "oh? You're approaching me? You're coming right to my admittance stand?"
You do you. I have none myself and am unlikely to ever get one. But I'm pro-choice on it. For adults. Kids should stick with ruining their hair, because it's a non-permanent way to experience regret. Could probably lead to better choices about tattoos later. Piercings, too.
I have never gotten a tat because I am too afraid of regrets. I admire a good ink job and whenever I see someone with a fresh one I will talk to them about it. But like you it isn't a thing I would want.
Also agree about hair and clothes. Unless it is totally inappropriate for weather or the situation (yes kids you are dressing up for the wedding we were invited to) I let my kids work it out for themselves. My parents were strict about clothing and I won't put my children through that.
My personal rule is that I can get any tattoo that I want, provided I still want to get it a decade later.
I think this is very much an 'each to their own' thing.
I have a Loth Cat from Star Wars on my arm I got at Star Wars Celebration 2019 and so I get warm fuzziness and memories of that time when I see it there. It was a fun experience I got to have with my family... and a very cute little critter too.
Admittedly I've been asked many times if it was a Pokémon LOL
Lol all of the mid 20’s to mid 30’s hipster chicks with arm sleeves are down voting you.
I have a couple of tats I got with my squad in Iraq when I was in the Army. Explaining those tats to those same younger hipster gals never seems to go over well.
This is my favourite. 痔 means haemorrhoid. Presumably it was meant to say 侍, samurai.
Why would you presume that? Maybe they’re suffering and trying to raise awareness.
Maybe he's a 痔 侍, haemorrhoid samurai, bringing awareness and defending those with inflamed bottoms
This sounds like a plot straight from Gintama.
...It really does. Especially with the amount of word play Gintama uses frequently (Kanji play in this case? Not sure if it's a 'they just look similar written down' thing or actually a verbal play too. I won't pretend to know the word for hemorrhoids in Japanese LMAO)
Man, I miss Gintama.
Season 2: Ronin prolapsus
Because their radicals are really similar.
"The Way of the Samurai lies in devoting one's body and soul to one's anus." -Hagakure
mmmm sweet sweet 痔
Samurrhoid
I mean we can probably all visualize the person who had that tattoo and "foreign pervert" probably fits them perfectly.
straightens fedora; leans on sheathed katana like a cane, from underneath a long trenchcoat
To be fair, those kind of mean the same thing
And honestly a pretty hillarious phrase to tattoo when some white foreigner rolls up asking for a "Lover of Asian Beauty" tattoo.
Where I live, we get a number of used vehicles imported from Japan, and for a while it was trendy to have English slogans on vehicles.
They frequently made little sense, I imagine our ones look the same to them.
You wouldn't happen to remember any would you? For some reason I love those "Why is a mouse when it spins? The higher the fewer." type things.
I have just the site for you:
Engrish.com
I was having difficulty understanding my Chinese boss one day, and after the third time I asked in total confusion, "What?" He looked at me and asked, "Why you not understand me, am I no speaking English?" I cracked us both up with my reply of, "No, you're clearly speaking Chinglish!"
Her: I am struggling with two words.
Me: Ok.
Her: Fuck and fuck.
Me: umm
Her: the first one is like a thing for eating a meal.
Me: Oh! Ok "fork" is what you eat with and "fuck" is what you do in private or yell when something goes wrong.
Her: Say it again.
(Multiple minutes later of me saying fork and fuck)
Her: So I eat with a for-K and f-U-ck in private.
Me: You got it, now go and fork yourself.
(Me getting hit with a pillow multiple times while laughing)
I have this sort of thing all the time here in Spain, though with shit/sheet.
There's plenty going the other way too, of course. At least I don't mistake miedo and mierda these days ...
One time I misremembered my Japanese teacher's mnemonic and wrote that my grandpa was married to noodles.
Teacher told us grandma is sofu because she has a sore foot from kicking grandpa's ass. I remembered it as sore bum instead, and changed grandma to soba
Sofu (祖父) is grandpa. Sobo (祖母) is grandma, which is even closer to soba.
Damn, I still cannot get that mnemonic right
I'm well aware, but thank you.
I need more. MORE!
Not OP but the Toyota MR2 had the following text on the rear window on some units:
Mature sporty personal
More innovation more adult
A man in dandism
Powered midship specialty
Lol those are great, thank you.
I'm trying to remember some of them, or find a photo. I can't remember what model of vehicle they were though.
Wasn't a tattoo, but a motorcycle decal. This dude had a Kawasaki crotch rocket with five kanji characters on it. Posted it to a forum, and this weeb says "lol where'd you get that?" dude answers all defensively "From the mall, why?" Weeb says "It says pig bird pig lizard dog." "No dude, it says N-I-N-J-A." He thought kanji characters translated directly to the latin alphabet.
豕 鳥 豕 蜴 犬
Damn, I kinda wanna play my English ninja wkth the Japanese word for ninja. But I do not want to end up like that.
Wait did the characters look like the letters for ninja or was it the (I’m assuming Japanese) equivalent of the letter n then I and so on
I don't precisely remember, I'm recalling a forum post I read at least a decade ago, but I do recall that he had at least tried to literally translate the letters "NINJA" to Asian text beyond just picking some McDojo font. I don't know if he had attempted to find kanji characters that looked relatively like latin letters or if someone convinced him that "This one means N" or something.
Not really related, but a couple of years ago in my home country, a Western bloke was actually pictured on the internet wearing a shirt that said something like "白人很笨" (white people are stupid).
Some of us buy those ironically though. I had a shirt that said (and I unfortunately cannot put it in kana/Kanji atm) something very close to, in full kana and kanji: "I am a stupid American. I'll buy anything."
I knee fully what it meant because the sentence was pretty easy, but I still wanted to travel to Japan wearing it.
Kinda want to get one in english now.
I imagine you were quite first impression popular with the local vendors!
Well I mean it's not wrong. Everybody's stupid, it's just a matter of quantity and context.
There's a great website documenting this. I'm surprised no one has linked to it.
https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
Example:
This one is great because those are literally the characters for "7" and "ring" but if you put them next to each other they mean "portable charcoal grill". Luckily it was an easy fix. An additional character was added and it now reads "7 rings" as intended.
It's kinda still messed up, even with the additional characters because you read right to left with vertical writing, and technically it should have a つ after the 7.
Oof https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%BC%AA
I have a friend that has Thai writing tattooed on his leg that translates to "I love chicken soup."
I think when he was drunk he went into a tattoo parlor thinking it was a restaurant.
Thats awesome
I've seen a few Sanskrit ones. Nothing drastic in real life, thankfully. I find the Chinese ones much more hilarious.
Had a friend in college legit get ancient Chinese calligraphy. Absolutely beautiful. But my international center buddy told me separately it just meant window. It was supposed to be this heavenly view or some such thing. No. It was window.
Why not? I got Vete a la Mierda tattooed on my arm when I was young and still learning Spanish. Occasionally, I've had the great opportunity to pull my sleeve up.
What does that mean
"Fuck off"
Literally "Go to the shit"
It means “Fuck You” and maybe some other things depending on context.
I saw a pic that supposedly said "egg fried rice". I wouldn't even be mad
A French women got an English tattoo. The two sentences were full of your/you're and it's/its mistakes.
That's typically more of a native speaker error, but I guess it could happen.
That's pretty slopppy
Hentai Gaijin
Foreign Transformer?
Franky is that you‽
A friend of mine wanted a tattoo in french, she speaks it but not fluently, I found a quote for her that she loved, she transcribed it to paper to bring it to the tattoo artist... I think she transcribed it from memory because she made a mistake in the text and I never had the heart to tell her (small word missing or something like that)... And it's a very long quote in a straight line on her vertebral column, so it's not easy to hide if she wears something more revealing...
When I was a kid I remember a clothing store getting in trouble because it was selling underpants with an artistic Arabic lettering design. They hadn't checked what it said, but it turned out to say "There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet." Having this on underpants didn't please anyone.
1 man with menstruation tattooed on his neck
How many Chinese people and places have mistranslated a word into English as "fuck?" I can't remember which word it is, some kind of food. So ya'know, glass houses and all that.
Pho king
Obligatory do not go to a tattoo parlor and ask them to tattoo something derogatory in their native language as a joke. At worst you'll severely offend them and at best they'll be extremely reluctant to do it because it could get them in serious trouble and thrash their reputation. I promise you it's nowhere near as funny as the internet would have you believe and it won't be taken well by a vast majority of tattoo artists.
Reminds me of XiaomaNYC intentionally getting chicken noodle soup to make the folks in china town crack up
The Chinese characters / text is 变態外人
(romanized "biàn tài wàirén")
Interestingly, Japanese uses the same characters for hentai, 変態. Tai is notably pronounced the same / similarly, while biàn / hen are different.
日本語土手
How about ‘never get a tattoo’. Full stop.
I will likely never get a tattoo. But I know there are lots of reasons to get tattoos, and it seems to me that the vast majority of people not only don't regret but feel good about the tattoos they get. So I dunno, sleep on it, but go ahead and get a tattoo if you really want.
I've only got one on my inner wrist but it makes me so happy when I see it.
That's a very odd thing to get tattooed..I love it! heads straight to the local tattoo shop
Why? Are you allergic to fun or something?
It's so weird, for over 30 years it didn't make sense to me, until all of a sudden I knew what I wanted and it just clicked? One thigh and calf piece later and I'm addicted. I get nothing but compliments during shorts season and the Leo in me lives for that shit.
Same, first 20 years of my life I disliked the idea of tattoos and thought I'd never, ever get any. Turns out all that was just society pushing puritan ideas on me and I just had to get over that.
Yeah tattoos are the shit! They make these meat bags we're all trapped in more bearable. My tattoos are my favorite part about me
It does feel nice to embrace your body, and like, make it more "your own". It's kinda like expressing your autonomy over it.
If you live in Japan you might want to avoid tattoos unless you want to be banned from all water parks and most hotsprings.
This is one of the few situations where I can say good thing I'm American lol
Yep. My tattoos have no meanings to anyone but myself, and there's no way that my 6'3" 220lb white ass would ever be confused for a Japanese person. I don't need to "say" a damn thing. They can tell I'm ガイジン just by looking at me.
I still remember my first trip to Asia and being noticed everywhere. Was telling a friend of mine later "oh that must be how minorities and attractive women feel all the time but still kinda better". There is just no way to blend in if you are a white-arab dude in a city that is +99% a specific east Asian ethnic group. I tried dressing like a local, I put on my blank New Yorker facial expression, didn't speak much, but nothing worked. Everyone was doing doubletakes and kids/old people were openly looking.
For real? Whats the reasoning?
Tattoos are associated with criminals, particularly the yakuza, afaik.
I'm almost tempted to get full body art of the Jojo rumble kana to see if one of the guards starts up, "oh? You're approaching me? You're coming right to my admittance stand?"
You do you. I have none myself and am unlikely to ever get one. But I'm pro-choice on it. For adults. Kids should stick with ruining their hair, because it's a non-permanent way to experience regret. Could probably lead to better choices about tattoos later. Piercings, too.
I have never gotten a tat because I am too afraid of regrets. I admire a good ink job and whenever I see someone with a fresh one I will talk to them about it. But like you it isn't a thing I would want.
Also agree about hair and clothes. Unless it is totally inappropriate for weather or the situation (yes kids you are dressing up for the wedding we were invited to) I let my kids work it out for themselves. My parents were strict about clothing and I won't put my children through that.
My personal rule is that I can get any tattoo that I want, provided I still want to get it a decade later.
I think this is very much an 'each to their own' thing.
I have a Loth Cat from Star Wars on my arm I got at Star Wars Celebration 2019 and so I get warm fuzziness and memories of that time when I see it there. It was a fun experience I got to have with my family... and a very cute little critter too.
Admittedly I've been asked many times if it was a Pokémon LOL
Lol all of the mid 20’s to mid 30’s hipster chicks with arm sleeves are down voting you.
I have a couple of tats I got with my squad in Iraq when I was in the Army. Explaining those tats to those same younger hipster gals never seems to go over well.