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Getting a Tattoo in Japan

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riisa-san

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I have a holiday of a lifetime coming up next month, and I want to get a tattoo to mark the occasion. I have never been to Japan/Tokyo before and never had a tattoo either. My Japanese is limited.

Are there places where "gaijin" can get a tattoo safely?
 
What is it with people wanting tattoo's recently, think this is the third thread about tattoo's in a week.

Anyhows to answering your question. Do not get a tattoo done in another country period. If your allergic or something hospitals are not the same and of course it will ruin your holiday. Also it is not uncommon for people to feel faint for a day after having the tattoo done.

If you want one done get it done over here about 1 week before you go, this gives time for the bleeding to stop and the scabbing process to start. Also if it needs a touch up you can get that done too most places in the UK will touch up their own work for free. Again if you have it done out there and you need a touch up when the scab comes off or you bleed the ink out.. then you will have to pay when you come back to the UK for sombody to do it.
 
My name is John Tumba and i have read your profile and have something very important i need to talk to you about but i do not fel comfortable with this site as it is a public site.
Please kindly get back to me with my private email address and i will reveal something very important to you.

My email address is:johntumba2007@yahoo.com

I wait for your kind response.

Good wishes to you.
John
 
Want something legit then PM me I dont release my email address for a reason The PM function on this site is fine for any questions you may have of a private nature.
 
Zaff is right you would be better off getting it here. With limited Japanese you might not get what you want for a start and in all honestly anything that can be done in Japan can be done here anyway. While the tattoo might go smoothly if anything did go wrong it would mess up your holiday.
 
Just thought I would check - thanks you for the advice.
 
But if you're going to do like practically every other person who has ever sought tattoo advice on JREF and ignore it anyway:

From Naka-Meguro station, exit and turn left (north). A couple blocks up on the opposite side of the road is a small tattoo parlor. First floor storefront right there on the main drag. Or, if you don't want to cross the street, continue northward for a couple hundred meters until you come to a traffic bridge. Stay on the surface street, but follow the curve of the traffic bridge and walk on up the hill a bit. You'll pass beneath an underpass, then just another 30 meters or so up the hill you'll see a tattoo parlor in the first floor of an apartment building. Again, first floor storefront on the main drag.

Don't worry about unsavory criminal element characters, since these are operated by and for youth for whom tattoos are just the latest trendy thing to do.
 
I have decided to get it when I get back from Japan, taking all things into consideration it's definately the safer and more practical option.
 
If it's going to have kanji in it, for the love of God get it done in a country where the artist learned them in school as a child and uses them on a daily basis.

If it's a butterfly or a dolphin or some such, it doesn't really matter where you have it done.
 
Since you enquired, it will be a chain of sakura flowers around my left wrist.
 
Ohhh.... very cryptic.
 
Lol very.

Im not sure about Middlesbrough but Manchester has some very good Kanji artists but quite often people ask for a kanji and end up getting the chinese system instead lol. No one wants egg fried rice tattooed on the side of their arm do they?
 
Exactly Although I am tempted to get some wording. I feel a pictoral tattoo would be just fine. I would like to get in done over there but I don't want to get something I don't want because of the language barrier and confined timeframe to get it done.
 
Yeah. if you want wording i bet you could ask someone on here to make you the correct Kanji...then just print it off and get the artist to simply copy it.
I was going to get a tattoo in Japan before but i was staying there for 3 months and i had my little translator with me but in the end i didnt bother.
 
I know the pattern I want. I can also add wording later Work in progress as they say.
 
true true. The only thing i would worry about is a reaction while on holiday and also of course the barrier that is language.
 
Exactly, don't want to be spending my trip-of-a-lifetime in bed/hospital with blood poisoning.
 
Yeah a few years ago i was there for the summer and i got really badly sunburnt and for over a week i couldnt go outside during the day lol. The last thing you want is the be restricted.
 
Bugger! Really sorry to hear that. Not sure if I will ever have the opportunity/money to ever do this again...so going to make the most of it.
 
Haha its OK just an experience i learned from. Im sure your make the most of it. Maybe you can get a few ideas of things to do from people of here.
 
Already have a trip to Mt Fuji booked and I have a little obsession with all things "kawaii" so a trip to Harajuku is also on the cards.
 
Riisa just also keep in mind that on your wrist may restrict you in later life, I hate to be the one sounding like your parents but.... Really tattoo's on forarms and wrists dont help you when trying to get jobs. For instance the job I have just left (my part time bar job) fired an employee for getting a tatoo on his wrist.

He said he would wear long sleeves but... the company said they could still see it and he would have to wear a bandage over it when at work. He refused, they fired him.
 
I have had a couple of coworkers here in Japan who had to quit and move somewhat down the scale of desirable employers. They weren't into the traditional Japanese gangster tattoos; they were just young folks riding the current trendiness of "western" style tattoos.

I'm not down on them as a matter of principle. I have two which I had done in a back alley in the Philippines when I was in the Navy. Done by hand power, none of that electric-powered modern stuff for me, thanks. But at 19 or 20 or however the hell old I was back then, I was dumb enough to get the tattoos but smart enough to foresee their potential impact on future employability and consequently got them in places where even t-shirts don't reveal them.

Remember, this ain't piercings that you can remove when the trend passes and let the holes grow shut. And the trend will eventually pass.

Ever looked at old photo albums and seen the horrible fashions and hairstyles that we laugh at on ourselves and loved ones from just a few years or decades ago? And how cool and trendy they were at the time? Now imagine still being stuck with those same things and unable to get rid of them, barring surgery.
 
Mt Fuji is great. my favourite place in Japan. You should pop into the shop thats about half way up. last time i was there they were selling canned fuji air lol and they had a pretty kawaii pikura stand there.
 
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