Japanese Dragon Tattoo

Question:
I heard lots of people saying how expensive Japan is, but I would love to get a Japanese traditional style tattoo. Now I wonder if anyone know a good tattoo artist in Tokyo or Kyoto since these are the two places I defenitly would visit. how are the prices, also 4x times the european price for a tattoo. My lower arm is allready done around and want to extend it further with those Japanese style so I probaly gonne extend it to the upper part if possible in Japan itself.

Answer:
- I think this is the part that really got you into trouble. This statement is pretty one-way. You make a statement about Japanese artists that lumps them all together. One assumes that this sweeping generalization is based on personal experience or first-hand knowledge of the subject. So then you blow it all to hell by saying... Sounds like you're talking out of your ass to me. It's perfectly acceptible to have an opinion on something you know nothing about. Just be willing to defend your statements. - A friend of the family has one - got it in the UK by a visiting artist apparently - nice trout jumping after fly thingy - and frankly, whilst it is lovely, I don't see how a good local artist couldn't do the same thing. Get some art books or something and ask if they think they could do the style. Unless of course the authenticity, not the appearance, is important to you which is your call. Japanese artists tend use more white ink than most European artists, from what I can tell. Of course I've never been to Japan and have only seen one example in real life and a few examples in books etc. - some people get flashwork just because the end result looks cool (sometimes even without any thought to the how and why etc.). To me, getting tattoed is like a sort of ritual. Getting tattooed is just as much a part of it as the tattoo itself. So a tattoo that looks like an irezumi but isn't is just a "fake". Ofcourse, getting a REAL irezumi, done in the traditional way, can be quite hard outside Japan (and according to my tattoo artist Shiryu, it can be somewhat difficult even in Japan). Ofcourse there's nothing wrong with having a "fake" irezumi. My first tattoo was a new-school japanese dragon. Without it, my interest for tattooing would never have been sparked. I have come to know the guy that did my first tattoo quite well, and I also got to exchange thoughts and views about tattooing and getting tattooed with several different tattoo artists at the Malmö convention. We're all different, and we all have different reasons for getting tattooed. Too bad western tattoo artists often use indiginous (sp?) art in their work without researching its origins and meanings. The result is that many people walk around with tattoos are highly offensive in a very different way than just naked women in obscene poses etc. (I don't understand why anyone would want hardcore BDSM images tattooed on them). - at the Malmö Tattoo Expo (a few weeks ago, in Sweden) I was at, I saw PLENTY of irezumi tattoos both being done (got one myself), and in the artists' portfolios, and there was ONE that used white (except for a few that used white in the eyes of various human figures)... So, from appx. 100+ different tattoos, white did NOT stand out as a much used color. Also, watch out for irezumi copies, made by western tattoo artists. They look the same to most of us, but they aren't the real deal. Here you can see all kinds of colors used. I showed a few of these copies to my tattoo artist (named in a previous post in this thread), and he told me that they were good copies, but most of them were flawed in style and use of color...