We Japanese are no strangers to Chinese characters (or kanji, in Japanese). The ancient letters from China make up a crucial part of our own written language, and we have to say the complex yet elegant form of kanji can seem strikingly cool (except when we had to practice and learn all those letters in grade school), even for those of us who use the letters everyday.

So we can certainly understand how these characters could hold a mysterious fascination for people from countries where kanji isn’t used at all. T-shirts featuring kanji are a common enough sight in many parts of the world after all, and for people who prefer to wear their favorite Chinese characters in a more, shall I say, permanent way, I guess tattoos are always an option, right?

Well, at least, that’s the option the person in the picture above apparently went for. But she most likely didn’t know what the letters she was getting tattooed on her back actually meant, the poor girl …



Yes, this tragic case of “tattoo fail” which has received attention on the Internet overseas is now being noticed in Japan as well. Although at first glance, the Chinese characters tattooed here may look stylish, the girl must have received a shock when she discovered what the letters meant. You can see the process she went through identifying the meaning of the letters with a smart phone app to discover that the tattoo on her back actually reads … “Chicken Noodle Soup”! She even goes so far as to referring to a Chinese menu to confirm the finding.

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