Changing cultures - tatts and piercings in Japan...

Just a brief observation at how much things can change, culturally speaking, in as little as four years...

When we were last in Japan, in a total of two years I saw maybe... maybe... one tattoo on anybody. And that was a heavily tatt'ed up lady in a club who was clearly fulfilling her role as yakuza harlot. Seriously. She was wearing a tank top and you could tell from her extensive dragon designs, her coke-whore thinness and severe rode hard and put away wet rapidly hitting the bad side of 40 and not in a good way look that she was some mob guys mistress.

But since I've been back I've seen at least a dozen tatts all around the city. Even here in Fukutsu, hardly an urban area. There's one girl who works in the grocercy store here in Tsuyazaki with lip and brow piercings... and this is a bit of a country area. It's just interesting to watch the shift in standards.

There are still vestiges of the old "tattoos=yakuza" mores, I've seen at least one ad for a sauna/capsule hotel that said "No tattoos", but the times, they are a changing. My father-in-law has a story about how his in-laws had to intervene on his behalf in order to get him into an onsen 25 years ago, and that was for his Snoopy tattoo, of all things. Now, girls aplenty roam the streets, tatted and pierced with nary a look.

Interesting...