Background: imagine 15 years ago I was still a teen and was getting into anime and Japanese games. I had started studying Japanese and really started hitting off on basic Japanese. I learned around 200 Kanji and was getting into trying grammar.
I lived in the ghetto growing up and ran into all kinds of random people. I would play basketball every now and then with my brother and our friends, smoke weed with the neighbors, general hood stuff.
One day a new guy moved into the neighborhood. His name was “ghost” and he was just as you’d imagine with a name like that, a white tatted up ex con. Dude never told anyone his real name, but his trade was tattoo art. He was a tattoo artist and would give tattoos to people in the neighborhood for cash. He would give them on discounts too. This guy went hard on selling himself. He showed pictures of his tattoo art that he had done on others and bragged about how good he was and what he could do. Being a teen in that environment, I was totally being sold.
I went to his house to inquire and he came out the front and rattled off why his stuff was so good. Naturally I asked if his needles were clean, if he took proper precautions to disinfect. He told me not to worry and that he took that aspect 100% serious. Then he said these words: “my stuff is clean and also, I use the BEST ink. It is quality Japanese tattoo ink – KAKI YASUI a pretty expensive too. Best quality ink you can get man I put nothing but quality and safety into tattooing.” I heard that and realized “kaki yasui” – doesn’t that mean “cheap writing”.
描きやすい
書きやすい
Made me reconsider getting a tattoo from this guy and I am glad I didn’t. Later found out he was hard on heroin and more than likely wasn’t disinfecting his equipment. Guy stole my neighbor’s moped and skipped town and I never heard of him again.
Thinking about this again, I realize the translation was probably closer to “easy writing ink”.
Just goes to show that even the ABSOLUTE basics can come in handy.
1 comment
That’s such a fun story! Glad you didn’t end up getting about the tattoo!
Total tangent, but I’m super curious about what’s going on with this “high quality Japanese tattoo ink.” I’d believe that it really was Japanese, since I don’t think he could’ve come up with “kakiyasui” on his own. But then that makes me wonder, is Japans tattoo ink even good? Like, tattoos aren’t really popular in Japan. Regularly people getting tattoos is a relatively recent phenomenon and before that it was only the yakuza getting tattood (part of the reason they’re still so stigmatized). So I feel like there’s no reason for Japan to be a producer of high quality tattoo ink since the market’s so small. Unless the yakuza just decided to get into developing tattoo ink on the side? Is this just another case of “it’s Japanese so it must be amazing because exoticism”? I have so many questions