Thanks! I was nervous as hell, but it came out fantastic! I’ve gathered here that Kanji is one step above a tribal arm band on the tattoo heirarchy, but it was a great way for me to put a bunch of concepts and important things together in one piece. Since this was my first (and probably only) ink, I wanted it to be special to me. And thanks for posting the pic, not sure why I was struggling so hard with that.

I located a designer who was able to take a basic design he already had and incorporate my stuff. The basic design is this:

The large symbols on top mean “family bonds”. The three words going down the length of the tattoo are my kids three names, and the small red symbol means “protect”.

The designer was very good about communicating how the symbols are done, how names are translated, what the syllabols mean for each name, and provided a reference sheet with everything on it. He did a half dozen drafts back and forth until I was happy with it.

I did some comparisons of his work to others on the net, and with Kanji it seems that there are some small style differences, but for the most part it all cheked out. At the end of the day, the guy could have spelled out maccaroni and cheese and I may not be the wiser, but…

If anyone is interested, I can direct you to his website. Very cool stuff.