There's this Japanese artist coming to town, and now I'm feeling just a tiny bit embarrassed to contact him for some dumb kanji tattoos...

This is so your fault! :p :D

I am sure he/she has seen much worse...

i would never get a tattoo from anyone without knowing it yourself. there was a guy who got chinese on his arm in london, from a chinese person (i think possibly from singapore originally, it is a long time ago since i read about this) and he asked for the usual rubbish most people get like power etc. but the guy put on something that said 'man with ugly face' (again working off memory here).

a tattoo should be a very special thing to the person and of great meaning. i believe you should know what it is exactly before getting the ink done.

btw for those who say it doesn't have meaning without つ or another kanji, i would have to say that is taking things a little extreme. all characters have meaning by themselves. they may not be used commonly like that but they still carry the meaning. in this case though it would be the noun rather than a verb meaning (taken from edict) victory; win; prevail; excel

many older writings of japanese include very few hiragana were used. unfortunately kanji is being used less and less by japanese.. how many use the kanji for ありがとう　（有り難う／有難う) anymore? it is a shame really.

I agree... of course.
I'm even quite sure MMM agrees (yeah, (s)he and I, we go waaaay back... a week at least :D ).

I'm just gonna make sure we both know what we're doing (the tattoo guy and I, not... mmm o.k.).

Thanks for your input. :rheart:

I didn't say it didn't have any meaning. I said it wasn't a word in Japanese.

勝利、優勝、克服、征服, 勝利, 成功

These are words meaning "victory" or "win". Hiragana isn't required to make a word a word, but is needed to conjugate a verb.

勝 by itself would most likey be read as a man's name, like Shou or Tsuyoshi.

In that respect it is meaningless.

(No offence, DAMB)

Update (because I hate it when people just suck the information out of you and you never hear from them again - ungrateful bunch :D ).

So: got it! :vsign:

I want to thank MMM (again). Because of him I went to see a Japanese tattoo artist and boy, what a difference that made!! I am still getting used to it, because I don't want to be a "tattooed girl" (yeah, don't ask...), but it is everything I could have hoped for (for now... it's still healing).

:rheart: D.A.M.B.

Very cool! Thanks for the update. I hope you can share a pic (after it has healed).

So that you can make fun of me? Huh?
Mmm, we'll see...