Chinese characters are cool!

Today is the day I discovered Hanzi Smatter: dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture. I am so happy that this blog exists, and so choked that it's been around since 2004 without my knowledge (especially considering that this guy's received a fair bit of media exposure).

From the introductory post:

I have been a fan of the website, Engrish, for years. To my surprise, there is virtually no website existent for pointing out the faults in Westerners’ interest of Eastern culture, especially the usage of Hanzi (汉字), Chinese characters.

As a Chinese-American（美籍华人）, I felt it was my duty and honor to educate the public about the misusage of Chinese characters, Hanzi（汉字）.

Thus begins a merry romp through various bits of kanji/hanzi nonsense, with special attention paid to tattoos proclaiming (for example) "healthy woman roof", "thank you, come again", "upstanding hottie would allow one lucky run-away to make love to my fertile body", and "hand warmer, air conditioner".

After this discovery, I took a look at what else the internets had to offer on this topic, and ran across this article, which also looks at Asian-Americans using such tattoos to express their Asian identity. For example:

Ken Arata, 25, is planning to get his family name tattooed down his spine in kanji to show that his Japanese heritage is the backbone of his existence even though he does not speak the language.

Besides not speaking the language, he apparently doesn't know much about the culture, either. Getting a tattoo is a poor way of expressing your Japanese heritage, unless your family history is one of organized crime.