Woman wonders if she is wrong for telling cousin his Japanese tattoo doesn't say what he thinks it does. AITA?
"AITA for telling my cousin his tattoo was incorrect?"
My (27F) family is split on if I did the right thing here. I'm feeling bad about what I said, maybe I should've just kept my mouth shut. I would appreciate a verdict from this sub. There was a wedding in the family recently, and my parents, brother and his girlfriend formed a clique and stuck together.
After dinner, my cousin (33M), who is brother of the groom, happily starts talking to us. We used to play together all the time as kids. He's one of the chill ones and we're all getting along really well, catching up.
I notice a new tattoo on his wrist that looks like it's in Japanese, a language I've been learning for a couple years for work. I ask him about it, so he pulls up his sleeve and says it's his daughter's name. He tells me he doesn't understand the language, but he loves his tattoo artist, they're pals and "I trust her with my life".
I squint and look at the tattoo. His daughter is called Olivia, which in Japanese you could write as "オリヴィア" (Orivia) or "オリビア" (Oribia.) However his tattoo said "Orutsua," written "オルツア."
I stared at it in disbelief. I checked it over and over in my head, and I was thinking oh my god, he just said he trusts that tattoo artist with his life. I thought of not telling him, but considered that if it were me I'd want to know... and I also was kinda pissed off this tattoo artist didn't do the research before permanently marking someone's body. And she was supposed to be his friend too!?
On top of that, while most of our family is white, some who live local to him ARE Japanese. So I was also thinking, holy cow, he has Japanese people in his life. I made up my mind and I sheepishly told him it might not be quite right.
I said the first and last characters were okay, but the middle ones would need adjusting. Although he was a little concerned, he laughed and was upbeat about it; and I told him oh gosh, I'm so sorry about this.
I made sure not to start trash talking the artist friend even though I wanted to. I got out my phone and showed him what his really said with a keyboard that changes roman characters to japanese ones, and then the version that truly said "Olivia," to hopefully give him confidence on what was right.
I told him it wasn't that bad, like man, most people don't speak japanese. I cannot stress enough how gently I tried to do this. I didn't want to linger on it because obviously it's an embarrassing topic and I'm sure he didn't either, so the conversation moved along. He said he'd maybe get it looked at.
We laughed about it, but man, he was probably laughing out of embarrassment. The poor dude. After the wedding my brother told me off and said I should've let it be. My mom said she disagreed and he needed to know about his own tattoo. That sparked a big debate in the car.
I can't believe my cousin is now one of those white guys with a gibberish aesthetic tattoo in an asian language. He just wanted his daughter's name! I feel like that tattoo artist scammed him. Am I the AH for telling my cousin his tattoo wasn't done right?
EDIT: Thanks for telling me what you think. I didn't even consider pulling him aside or messaging him in private until you guys brought it up! That's exactly what I should've done.
Also, my cousin is a cool guy. We're judging if I'm the AH here, not my cousin lol, and tbh I kinda was. He handled the whole thing with a lot of grace. For all we know that tattoo artist told him "don't worry bro, I'll handle everything." Don't jump to trash talking him.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
I wanted a tattoo in Thai that said “teacher” (ajarn) because I was teaching. They whipped something up for me. I asked if I could take a photo and think about it. They said yes. I took the photo, headed back to my hotel, showed the photo to the front desk clerk and asked, “What does this say?” They confirmed it was correct. I was not gonna be one of those people.
NTA. Information is power, especially when it involves permanent skin art. Better a quick sting than a life of incorrect kanji.
mifukichan (OP)
information is power, but ignorance is bliss! 😭 ahah, thanks.
NTA, that’s why i enlisted the Classics Department of my University for my Latin joke tattoo. and the Linguistics Department for a different Aramaic tattoo. He needs to know.
All my language related tattoos are dead languages, including the Sanskrit, so, it’s unlikely I’m running across too many people competent enough to read them. But Japanese is not a dead language and he will run across people who are competent.
I grew up in Japan, and fluent. That craze of the early 00’s where everyone was getting kanji was bad. I walked into a tattoo parlour in the city one Friday night, and of the flash art on the walls, they had a heap of Japanese, with the meaning next to it. Most were fine, but they had 金玉 - billiard balls. That is not what that means. It’s slang for testicles.
NTA. Also it's terrible but the first thing I thought of was that it would be easier to change the daughter's name then it would be to fix the tattoo.
NTA. I think there are many non-Asians (of all varieties) who get tats with the Asian characters either because they think they're exotic or they are drunk. I dated an Asian guy for 7 years.
Once we went into a tat shop. I happened to notice a rack with the stencils of Asian characters. He pointed out a few and laughed because they were just Asian-looking characters, but not real words.