Day 05

Day 05- A picture of somewhere you’ve been to.

Guess where? Yep... a tattoo parlor :)

This particular one is called Otherworld Tattoo, my artist was J Medina.

Links: Website, MySpace, Facebook

Fun facts:

- For the first 20 years of my life, I was deathly afraid of needles and was convinced that I could never withstand the pain of getting a tattoo.

- The first time I saw a tattoo that I even remotely liked was when I went to Vegas... I forgot what restaurant it was but there's a Japanese place there and to mark the gender of the bathroom, they have the back of a man and a woman, both with tattoos. The woman had what looked to be lace on half of her back (right side) and the man had a more traditional body suit with a samurai image. I have never been able to get that image out of my head and am sort of considering getting a half-back tattoo if I could ever find something that meant that much to me to get done.

- I got the tattoo on Sept 24th, on our (bf and my) 35 monthiversary.

- For the first 2.5 years of our relationship, he was heavily opposed to me ever getting a tattoo.

- Surprisingly, the bf was going to surprise me with a tattoo as my birthday present, but decided he should ask me first (haha, as opposed to.. surprising me ON my birthday with "Guess what! You're getting a tattoo! Happy birthdaaaaay~")

- When I had it done, the only people who knew I was getting it done was my boyfriend, my brother and my best friend of 16 years. My parents didn't find out until I went home and showed them two weeks later -- kind of a funny story xD but the bottom line is that I'm still alive and they haven't disowned me, if you were wondering.

- The actual design is my father's side mon, or his family symbol. My mom thinks it means Wakasa tsurugi katabami （若狭剣片喰）. "Wakasa" is the name of the place and "tsurugi" means sword. Traditionally, the males take on their father's mon and the females take their mother's. I also know my mother's side mon, and am considering getting it done on my right wrist in the next few years.

- Placement: I had it done on my left wrist because my dad is VERY left brained. He's thoughtful, logical, very sensible, always looks for the best deals, etc. My mother, conversely, is pretty creative (right brained, thus my right wrist); she used to spend a great deal of time crafting, and is currently getting into Japanese calligraphy and water colouring. YES, I do realize that the right side of the brain controls the left and vice versa, but I don't really care. Thanks but no thanks.

- My artist, J Medina, is actually really into Japanese full body suits and is in process of getting his own done. You can't see it in the picture but he has his face and neck tattooed as well. He actually went to Japan and had a well known Japanese artist complete part of his body suit. His first tattoo? His entire back! It took 5 hours to complete.

As for what I had done..

Here's a bad picture of the mon... photocopied over a few times, then this particular picture was taken with my phone (not an iPhone4 haha, quite obviously). I forgot who actually found it for us but I've had a copy of it in my room for quite some time and recently re-discovered it a few months ago. I inverted the colors when I handed in the design.

PS- If you look closely at the top picture, you can see how hard I'm gripping the arm of the chair.... hahaha.

PPS- On that note, getting a wrist tattoo HURTS like a beeeeeyatch (pain comes and goes). But if you really, really want it, you can get through the pain.

I thought about making a separate blog or do a series of blogposts on the FULL details... process of healing, etc but figured it wouldn't be that interesting. PLUS I hadn't shown my parents yet and my mom reads my blog :P sooo it was kind of out of the question. Feel free to ask questions if you have any, though! :)