Lost in translation

Everyone says be careful what you choose for a tattoo, its permanent. That and if you're getting a tattoo in another language make sure you know what it means. This guy clearly didn't do either.

This guy that reminded me of Sloth from The Goonies came through my line, he had a wife beater on and his arms were covered in tattoos. One tattoo that caught my attention was a Japanese one written in katakana. It said モチメチネ which reads as 'mo chi me chi ne' and sounds like mochi meh chi nay. "much machine? much money?" I tried to read it out loud and couldn't . I asked him what it meant and he said "Sarah" Lmfao I couldn't help it I started laughing at him.

ばか！そですね？

Quick Japanese lesson, the Japanese have three different writing systems. There's the most well known kanji, which originated from the Chinese  It's usually assumed by 外人 that every single kanji is Chinese. There's hiragana which has around 50 characters and is comparable to the regular English alphabet, and then there's katakana which also has around 50 characters and is used to translate foreign words into Japanese.

私は日本語がすこしわかります、でもまだじょずじゃありません。だけどカタカナわかります。- I understand some Japanese but I am not fluent. However I do understand katakana.

Because I was oh so social in high school, I would sit at home and watch Sailor Moon and Japanese dramas and movie. With the power of the Internet I taught myself how to read katakana and hiragana, I can only read a hand full of kanji though.

So I corrected the guy and showed him what his tattoo translated to and he was pissed.

Moral of the story: do your research before getting a tattoo!