at the end of the day, this is an ugly boy

Have you ever looked at someone's tattoo and said to yourself "why???!!!". Why the overrused exhausted misunderstood yin yang symbol? Why any Chinese or Japanese symbol? Is it the pretty squiggles? Of course it is!

As a traveller, I have been privy to the toned down, honed down, buffed, sun-kissed bodies of my haggling brethren ... long days doing nothing much, eating cheap and lolling about musing on the wonders of existence tend to lend a somewhat ethereal existential air to what is really an incredibly self-involved navel-gazing exercise supported by third world economies that miraculously transform the 'poor student' et al into the rich traveller. More often than should be legally permissible, I meet up with some young beautiful thing that has recently acquired a memento of this hedonistic period of their lives in the form of a TATTOO. If said person has managed to break free from the common dolphin symbol, they've probably inscribed 'beautiful' flowing 'ethnic' Chinese characters instead.

Tattooing meaningful words on your body in Chinese characters might be hip, but it's a risky business when you don't read or speak Chinese.

hanzismatter.com is a weblog dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture, most often in tattoo form. It's good for a laugh. The blog's creator, Tian, posts photos of tattoos submitted by readers who thought they knew the meaning of the Asian characters inked onto their bodies - and points out the misspellings and mistakes (a necessary public service!).

There is the fantastic story about a boy with his badly done Chinese tattoo. He wanted the tattoo to say "Love, Honor, and Obey", instead he got "At the end of the day, this is an ugly boy". And let's not forget the girl who had "Crazy Diarrhea" tattooed at the low of her back - at least she got it put in the right place!

As a tatto artist confesses on the weblog :

The tattoo artists don’t care what the kanji means because they don’t care what you put on your body, especially when you are getting the cheapest tattoo in the shop. Most tattoo artists can’t read Japanese so how do they know what that stuff says, all they know is that you’re sure that this is what you want on your body for the rest of your life.