Well, the Koi fish is a very common symbol to use. If you really wanna be creative and original, you can mix up some symbolic images.. Like make a samurai koi fish with tiger stripes - rough idea, but you get what I mean..

ya and it will be a killer fish lol :D

What westerners think of and admire as the traditional Japanese style tattoo is what's frowned upon in Japan because of the associated social meanings related to gang membership. If you decided to get Russian mafia prison tattoos because they appealed to you it would cause you some social trouble in Moscow too, tattoos have very specific social meanings depending on motif all over the world.

What seems to be more accepted in Japan are "fashion" tattoos which would be tattoos done in a western style or with imagery not related to what is found in the tattoos of Japanese gang members. So a girl with a tattoo of a unicorn on her ankle would provoke less apprehension than a guy with a back covered in samurai.

Still, you are not living in Japan so you don't have to live under those social constraints.

Thanks for the great explanation, edelweiss.

P.S. Beautiful weather today in SF, eh? :) (I moved here last summer)

Yes! The best weather is always found at this time of the year unless we get one of our random sunny weeks in February or March! But this year has been strangely cold.

If you are looking for an artist to do Japanese style tattoos here in San Francisco I have a GREAT recommendation for you - Yutaro Sakai at Skull & Sword. He is very popular and can be hard to get an appointment with but he is extremely talented. He's nearly done doing sleeves for a friend of mine right now, Koi fish in water with autumn leaves on her right and sparrows flying in wind with cherry blossoms on her left arm.

He doesn't post a lot of his work on line but here's a link to some of his stuff.

http://www.theskullandsword.com/yuta...ia2_large.html

some people require immediate medical attention :D

his tattoos are impressive (technically, as artistically they do not appeal to me at all), although the Chinese characters are weak, he is not a calligrapher. So if you want kanji to go with your tattoo, find a calligrapher, and then let the guy tattoo them.

In traditional Japanese tattoos you usually don't see any written characters, only images.

i was referring to the one, that has them

MMM, you may want to kick this bot's arse out of here, it is becoming irritating.