Shocking the Culture, Pt. II

He needed to see how this affected everyday people, so, accordingly, found what he was looking for in some kind of online interview series. It was a low budget Q&A conducted on Japanese pedestrians on the street. Kind of low hanging fruit, (to keep up the analogue). But today, it was exactly what the doctor ordered. He searched for a video about tattoos. Eventually, he found one, and clicked on it.

As the people in the video began talking, he realized they were speaking in Japanese. He found an option for subtitles, which were thankfully fully transcribed.

"So, why do you think tattoos on women are so ingrained in Japanese culture?" began the interviewer. Before him were two young Japanese women, one with short hair, the other with a shoulder-reaching set, both rather cute.

The long-haired one spoke up first. "I don't know, but my mom -- she had tattoos all over her body, she--"

"She was a dragon lady," butted in short hair, laughing.

"Yes! She very much was! And she told me how the tradition started long ago, and developed among men with the Yakuza movement, as a mark of ownership and identification, and over history, from a mixture of different elements, it just became... synonymous with femininity, with girlhood."

"Do you have any tattoos, and if so where are they?"

The two women looked at each other, laughing.

"Of course we do..!" Short hair tugged the neckline of her blouse down -- not explicitly, but just enough to show a chunk of her right breast. A smattering of ink could be seen coming from below, patterned over the entire swell of her breast, and presumably hiding the rest underneath her shirt and bra. "Here's part of mine, which I got on the right side of my chest back in junior high. I still like it a lot, the artist was one of the best in Sapporo."

Meanwhile, long hair turned and, somewhat sheepishly, tugged down her pants to show off a set of elaborate black wings just across the top of her ass cheeks -- which, Lenny noted, were one of the juiciest he had ever seen. Then he remembered his reality change, and silently thanked his stars.

The camera pointed down and zoomed in to give the audience a good look. "This is mine. I got it when I was seventeen, from a friend of my father."

On the upper globes of her looming ass, in the middle of those wings, read, "LOVE".

Lenny watched on with intense, awestruck eyes as more and more women were subject to the same questions, and all of them revealed the obvious -- yes, they did have tattoos. Yes, here they were. One of them was a tomboyish girl who had a tattoo depicting a thin naked Marilyn Monroe running up her left shin. There was a buxom, shy mom who had a tattoo of a penis head right in between her thick cleavage -- which was in clear, blatant view before the camera and, naturally, anyone else she came across that day barring the blind. Her daughter, meanwhile, had a tattoo with the words 'FUCK SLUT TRAMP' across her entire back. Mother dear laughed as she playfully ran her hand across it for the camera, while her daughter smiled over her shoulder.

The man's foot tapped against the carpet.

This really was the reality of life for women in Japanese society, now. He had overhauled an entire sensibility, all with a few words. The only cost: a bit of premature carpal tunnel kicking in again.