Japanory

Tattoo in Japan – part 3 (I think)

January 10^th 2008

So it's time to get my cover-up mentioned here finished once and for all. The ground work was done with some colouring in of the main arm piece and now it's time to finish it all off in one go.

I've decided to add a bit to it so that it runs over my shoulder and across my back. I like the curlicues the tattoo artist has put into to the design so this will be continued to include a name…

Oh no! The first rule of getting a tattoo is not to ink a name into your skin. After all, who knows the future? Obviously someone should never have the name of their partner, favourite rock band or celebrity tattooed on them – how crass.

But this is to be my daughter's name. Whatever happens in the future, she will always be my darling daughter. The text is somewhat disguised, too.

Another 4 or 5 hours under the needle passes in a flash – the conversation, as ever is stimulating and completely fascinating. He chooses music he knows I like too, so we discuss bands, history, politics… everything, you name it, we've probably chatted about it.

Because it's a cover-up he doesn't photograph it to include in his album but sent me the photos anyway.

Time to Start 2008

With a couple of free weeks…

On Monday 7^th January we all went to take Mum to the airport to catch her plane for her Borneo adventure. It was a fairly early flight to we parked and went into the airport for a rather nice breakfast. There's not a lot to do in Narita airport – you certainly can't spend hours browsing the shops like Heathrow and most other airports. It's quite dull and disappointing really.

Rhiannon started back at school the next day and I went for my Tuesday coffee morning and a much needed catch-up and relaxing chat with The Girls. After school was a Japanese New Year Festival, complete with warm sake (which was alcohol free – what was the point of that? It's vile, anyway!). Rhiannon doesn't like the dragon – it terrified the life out of her on her first day of school last year and she hasn't fully recovered. So we didn't stay long.

Then it was back to work for me – juggling everything with school runs, after-school clubs and so on as usual.

It was lovely to have some time to myself, even though I was putting myself under a heap of pressure to get all my articles written before Mum returned.

But there was another trip to the tattooist in the middle of those two weeks – more about that in the next post!