There's a website somewhere with photos of tattoos in various Asian languages, with commentary from people who actually speak those languages about what the characters mean. Most of them were something like, "Well, the person who has this tattoo says it means 'river.' I guess if you turn it sideways and remove those two lines and add another line here, you'll get this character that means 'elephant,' that in Japanese is pronounced almost the same way as the word for 'river.'"

Dana, mega-ugh. Best of luck to you getting through it and your husband finding a job elsewhere.

Kanji symbols are... controversial in tattooing, from what I know. I think they are passing out of fashion, and are often roundly mocked by Japanese/Chinese speakers.

Bobcat Goldthwait has a tattoo on his buttcheek of (wait for it) a Chinese cymbal. [link] (Possibly NSFW, and offensive for racial caricature)

Yeah, I've also seen a good site mocking bad Hebrew tats. Most of which are of the "take an english phrase, transliterate the letters without translating the actual language, and print it left-to-right" flavor of errors.

I have a friend with a tiny tear drop tattooed on the inside of one of her fingers.

Is she Hispanic? There's that whole tradition of Cholo tears.

My brother and I tried to get Dad to get a different tattoo. Some suggestions were: a partially peeled banana, the word "PIMP" in gothic letters, and the kanji for "potato."

In the end, going with his initials was the smart thing to do, since we clearly don't have his best interests at heart.

The guy who did my tat had L-O-V-E and H-A-TE tattooed on his fingers. Which scared me for the first two minutes; afterward I figured it was his idea of a joke. He also had Tony Montana in his cube. "Say hello to my little friend!"

Hec, no. I should ask her about it. She has a lot of them. This one is tiny.

Eta: I have seen lots of tears on faces and dots on hands but hers is almost a paisley shape.

I have a friend with a tiny tear drop tattooed on the inside of one of her fingers. You almost can't see it. It's an odd place, I think.

I know several people (Derby girls, Cash) with those as well as mustaches tattooed on their fingers.

I love the mustache finger tattoo.

Is she Hispanic? There's that whole tradition of Cholo tears.

I've always thought 'cholo' was a very bad word but now they're opening a restaurant out here named Cholo. I'm so confused.

I know several people (Derby girls, Cash) with those as well as mustaches tattooed on their fingers.

I have a visceral and irrational dislike of the ironic mustache in general, and this iteration in particular.