My purpose here is to keep track of my experiences with Japanese tattoo. My perspective isn’t completely unique (many non-Japanese people have or appreciate the art), but it will be unique insofar as it is happening to me and to no one else. It is my hope that I will be able to provide not only a journal of my experience and updates on the evolution of my tattoo, but also interesting cultural anecdotes, information, or articles about this art. I will not discuss the cost and I cannot help you get a tattoo appointment. Before proceeding, please note:
1) This site may be considered Not Safe for Work. You can expect pictures of my butt and (mostly covered) crotch region.
2) The only photo adjustments I make are for white balance and exposure. Contrast, black/white, and saturation levels are never adjusted in an effort make as accurate a representation of the work as possible.
This blog is inspired by and dedicated to Mike, a man I have never met (we finally met!). Mike’s blog Munewari Minutes served as a constant source of inspiration early in my tattoo journey. His blog was a touchstone for my goals and an assurance that what I wanted was worth patient pursuit.
I know it’s been quite awhile since my last update. Whereas my last post was a similar multi-session update, this one is different in that I have (for the most part) remembered to take pictures of each session’s progress. The only caveat is apparently one of these appointments the only photos I have are two crappy pics from my cellphone. But let’s be real, this whole thing is more of an archival situation anyway. I’m not out here making art with these pictures.
These five appointments (10 hours of tebori) involved coloring in the phoenix and leaves on my stomach. I suppose I only have two major observations from this part of the process so far: The first is that Horizakura has added a lot more nuance in the color gradations than I was expecting. An example can be seen in the main body of the phoenix. Where I expected a solid green coloring, he instead included the blue coloring that is very faintly present in the original painting that the tattoo is based on. I really love the way it’s coming out. The second item of note is that during an early conversation, Horizakura had mentioned more outline work to be done on the little circles on all the feathers you can see. I’ve come to really despise being outlined, so I was really not looking forward to that coming down the pike. When the time came however, Horizakura said he decided on a different approach, saying that outlining each circle would put too much black into the feathers. Instead, he opted to freehand all of the circles onto the feathers with a marker and then apply the color around the circles. It is incredibly tedious and time consuming work, but it is certainly worth it. I really love the way it looks, especially when you see the pale green he added into the circles on our most recent appointment.
Overall I would say that the process of adding color has been slower than I expected, but that’s only because of the amount of detail and variety he is putting into all the different flora and fauna in the tattoo. Patience now will pay dividends later.
This is perhaps the longest I have ever gone without updating this blog and without taking pictures. Candidly, this blog has just not been at the forefront of my mind lately. There is just so much else going on in my life that my tattoo in general has sort of fallen into a secondary role. Horizakura and I are still having regular appointments, but I just haven’t always had the time to take pictures and update and when I have had the time, I haven’t had the drive. I’m not too bothered by it to be honest. All of the missing photos were of cherry blossoms being colored in. In fact, our most recent two hour appointment was coloring in the last of them. I think that puts us at 15 appointments and approximately 30ish hours just on cherry blossoms.
Tomorrow Horizakura will start putting color into the phoenix on my belly. In case you had any doubt, I’m not looking forward to two hours of getting stabbed in the gut… but I am very excited to see what it’s going to look like! I had considered begging him to finish my arms next but that old mantra is never far from my mind. It all has to get done eventually. What’s the difference what we do next?
Progress has been a bit slow this year with how much I’ve been working out of town. We only managed one appointment per month for March, April, and May. Summer is looking good though; not a lot of weekend projects for me which hopefully means no cancelled tattoo appointments. The photos in this post cover my appointments in April and May. More cherry blossoms colored in… I think by the numbers about 2/3rds of them are done now. Could be finished with all of them by the end of July or August I think. Lately I’ve been pretty fixated on thinking about what the goldfish on my leg will look like when they’re colored in. It’s exciting to think about the next steps being so close. As a final note on this appointment, shout out to Horizakura for shading half a cherry blossom on my back at the end of my last appointment! Gave me a chuckle!
Does anybody know if I used that semicolon correctly?
Session 154 and 155 were on back-to-back Sundays. We broke our typical cadence because both Horizakura and I had lots of travel planned through March and we were going to have to cancel a couple appointments. In order to compensate for that, we did two in a row. My first work trip was shortly after my 155th appointment and I totally forgot that I never took an update photo afterwards. I don’t think it matters too much though because the content is basically the same. Cherry Blossoms. Some of the ones that were not previously colored in are now colored in. That’s how this works.
The following photos cover four hours of tebori over our last two appointments.
It is probably already fairly obvious that I’m not making enough time for this blog the way I used to. I’m generally still consistent with taking photos after each session, but I’m often forgetting or unable to post those updates here in a timely fashion. Case in point: These photos are from my first session of the year in January. I’m also pretty much out of gas when it comes to giving these posts titles. Back when there was a wider variety of progress happening, there was a little bit more to pull from. These days, I don’t know how many times I can figure out a different way to say, “He colored more cherry blossoms.” From now on, I will probably just use a very simple Session Number title while reserving the right to change that whenever I feel like it because you don’t pay for this and I’m a god within these pages so I will do whatever I want including writing run on sentences like this one.
Whew!
Session 153 was two hours of coloring in cherry blossoms. A careful observer will note (and I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here before) that Horizakura puts a very small amount of white in between all the stamen in the cherry blossoms. This is a fantastic detail and I love it, but it certainly adds to the tedious, time consuming nature of coloring these in. Not much else to say here, have a peek!
I usually prefer to post these end of the year wrap ups closer to the turn of the New Year. I don’t have a particularly good reason for why this one is coming in so late, I’ve just been putting it off. The good news is, I think there was only one January appointment included in these photos. I took them before my first appointment in February.
By the numbers, 2024 was our most productive year yet. We again tied my record of 19 appointments in the year, but broke my hourly record with 38 hours of tattooing. That puts my total hours at about 259 hours with Horizakura.
Looking back on this year, I think the main highlight must have been the NYC Convention and the success of the r/Irezumi meetup. Once again, the amount of support I received from old and new faces alike was really humbling. I am excited that I was asked to make arrantements for this year’s convention as well! I’m excited to keep it going and to keep it growing. In addition to the NYC convention, I also had the opportunity to be tattooed at a tattoo convention for the first time ever (Star of Texas). I also had the good fortune to tack on a number of tattoo shop visits during different work trips around these United States. I was able to visit Civilization Tattoo (VA), Electric Tattoo (NJ), Crown and Feather Tattoo Co (PA), Forever Valentine Tattoo (PA), Philadelphia Eddies (PA), and Alley Cat Tattoo (VA). Possible there were some others in there that I’m forgetting and if so, I apologize. I would like to offer a blanket “Thank You!” to all the shops that let me disrupt their days so I could be nosey and see their space. It’s of course great seeing all of the incredible work folks are putting out on IG or Reddit, but it’s fun for me to see where the sausage gets made.
The photos that accompany this wrap up are not as thorough as the pictures I have taken in prevous years. I’m finding myself short on time almost always between increased responsibilities at work, being a father and husband, and just trying to carve out a little down time for myself. Overall, I still think I am achieving my goal of cataloging this process broadly, so I’m not really inclined to beat myself up about it too much.
Take a look at the pictures, and as always, thanks for following along with me here. I would of course still do this even if nobody ever read these words, but it is fun to have people to chat with about what I’m doing. Thanks.
Logging into my blog and checking my last post is typically how I figure out which appointment number I’m on. I absolutely could not believe my eyes when I saw the date of my last post. November 4th?! How can that BE?! I suppose it was especially surprising because, although I’ve been very bad at posting here, I have been very consistent with taking progress photos. The bad news is any possible interesting tidbit that I was likely to want to share from these appointments is now absolutely lost to the dark abyss of my horrible memory. I can, however, share a couple reflections on the process of adding color!
After over 250 hours of tattooing, you start to feel like a bit of an expert on your own experience. I’m no expert in telling people how to care for their tattoos, how to get tattooed, or what to do before a tattoo, but I am an expert on what works for me. The amount of time things take to heal, which parts will be more difficult than others, and the like are all things I have developed a really good sense for over the last 9 years. Moving on to color has been a bit of a shake up for me! Seeing how different colors heal at different speeds has been especially surprising. After a typical sumi appointment, it would only take about two weeks for my skin to look outwardly healed. There would be some tenderness, but from the outside, the skin would appear smooth and perhaps a bit dry (I dry heal). There are some areas of red that are still visibly healing after 8 weeks! Wild stuff.
People who have been following along with my work for a while may also know that I tend to sit for a tattoo without any distractions. By that I mean, I would not bring my phone over to the table while I was getting tattooed. I would listen to whatever Shinji was playing in the shop or engage in light discussion with him. I have always valued my time getting tattooed as a chance to unplug from my technology and media dominated life (I don’t count the music because Shinji plays music on a vintage analog radio). Most of the last 250 hours has been me turning inward and sitting in silence with my thoughts. Starting in 2024, I decided to afford myself a little reprieve if the Ravens are playing football. I really do enjoy watching football and moving my appoitments to Sundays was in conflict with that for quite a while. If the Ravens aren’t playing during my appointment, however, I still sit in silence as I normally would.
I’m sure there’s a handful of other thoughts that are escaping me now, but I’m sure I will bring them up in another post as they come to mind. Until then, to summarize the last two months: Horizakura tattooed me for 8 hours over the last 4 appointments (appointment numbers 149 – 152) during which he continued to fill in the cherry blossoms on my legs.
Session 149
Session 150!
Session 151
Somehow my camera was changed from shooting RAW to shooting JPEGs. It must have happened during a family Christmas photo. I would like to blame my son as he does like to fiddle with my camera. Anyway, I have limited color correction control on these photos so things might look a little too vibrant and the white balance is off.
My previous assertion that white ink counts as a color because white light indicates the presence of all colors was not well received by social media. I admit it’s a reach, but sometimes it just feels good to lie to yourself. Well my pedantry doesn’t matter anymore. On my 148th appointment with Horizakura, he spent two hours coloring in the cherry blossoms on my left leg. If you had told me back in 2015 that it would only take 248 hours and 45 minutes spread out over nine years for us to start getting this tattoo colored it… well honestly I probably would have had a nervous breakdown. That doesn’t matter though because it is finally happening. I feel like I went on Oprah and the secret gift under the seats was sick tats. Please see sample image below:
Naturally, I’m a real cool tattoo guy and cool tattoo guy code dictates that I push all expressive emotions deep down into my guts. As such, outwardly I resemble the sunglasses emoji.
In the photos below, you can see that Horizakura colored in the red and yellow of a bunch of the cherry blossoms on my left leg. I had suspected that this sort of Paint by Numbers approach might be used for efficiency. What I’m not sure of is if the next appointment will continue with the red and yellow or if he will go back over these same flowers to add in the green. I can tell you with 100% certainty that I don’t care what he does because I’m just so damn happy to have reached this point. Even just these few cherry blossoms feel like an incredible reward for the patience that has been required of me for so long. I am invigorated.
I posted an update after this session on Instagram, but forgot to make a post about it here. On my 147th appointment, Horizakura wrapped up the white on the dragon… at least for the foreseeable future. You can see he added white to the tail spikes and the spikes along the spine of the dragon on my right hip. Not much to say about this one, it was a quiet, routine appointment. At the time, I didn’t really consider what Horizakura’s next move would be. I have been particularly bad about making accurate predictions so I supposed I didn’t give it much thought. Writing this retrospectively, I see now that this simple step forward put us at the threshold of a much more exciting milestone.
gaijink 