This is my first and only tattoo that I got in Bangkok, Thailand, for my twentieth birthday  from my sister Erin.  It is based on the Japanese wood-block print In the Well of the Great Wave of Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.  The kanji (Japanese character) in the wave is means "life."

Why did I get this tattoo?  I got this tattoo done while I traveling around Southeast Asia with my sister for three months during the summer of 2002.  This travel experience was the time of my life, and I wanted something life-lasting to commemorate it.  I chose an Asian piece of artwork to symbolize the trip, the water theme is to show my love of ocean, and the life kanji shows my passion for life.  On a higher level, it symbolizes life's wave-like nature as follows: the ebb and flow of the ocean symbolizes organic reincarnation, the wave's crests and troughs symbolize the birth/death cycle and moderation of all things, and the continuous connectivity of the wave symbolize the fluidity and continuity of life transcending the individual and the time frame.  Many of these symbolic representations are central to Buddhism is how the Asian artwork fits into this model.

?2003 Ryan Brainard
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