RoryQ

Love these yellow gollancz editions.

That's such a sick backpiece already. Those lines are insane, even on an iPhone they look super huge, no wonder you couldn't sleep!

I asked them about getting tattooed at the London Convention when I was in their shop last summer, and they said they almost always made space (particularly if you've been tattooed by them before), but that it was best to get to them when the show had just opened. Haven't booked my flight yet, I'm not sure whether I'm going to stay for Saturday too. At the moment I'm just there on the Friday.

I've stayed in the Park Hyatt Tokyo a couple of times and although you can walk around without a problem if you want to eat / drink in either of the two bars or restaurants the staff can be sticky about making you observe the dress code, and doing that tends to mean you have de facto covered up. I was politely told once that they couldn't seat me in the casual lobby bar (I was wearing shorts). Embarrassing and a bit frustrating, but not unexpected really. The pool was a no-no without rash guards. Oddly the gym is no problem. As far as public baths go: I found two where I was let in... dunno if they are on the seedy end of the spectrum but it didn't seem like it.

They do more western trad than Japanese style but Inkrat in Tokyo were doing walk-ins when I was there, as was Three Tides Tokyo. If you could mail ahead you could also set something up with the likes of Bunshin Horitoshi via email probably? As far as the shorts go:- Day to day visible tattoos shouldn't be a problem on your trip. Although I personally prefer now to cover up (as I have more and more coverage, and I feel like I'm at a tipping point) if it was the height of humid summer I'd wear the shorts. That said, at some temples it felt more appropriate to be covered up. Particularly if it's a national holiday or something is going on. The other places it can be an issue are very high end restaurants and the nicer hotels - Park Hyatt etc. But really that's true of any city in the world.

Zercher squats or trap bar deadlifts would be another option. I once tried barbell hack squats a few times but never got the technique down, I was doing something weird with the bar path (even weirder than usual).

Well, if the sessions on your back end up being brutal and you feel like you've been beaten up then I would just take a couple of days off and come back to it when the initial healing phase has started. If you're prepared to be flexible with your exercise selection then you can work around most things. Avoid elbow flexion when you've had your ditch tattooed... Avoid knee flexion when you've had your kneecap done... Common sense I guess. I can't really remember what I did when I was getting sessions done on my back, but I'm pretty sure I just took a few days off and then maybe made some small exercise substitutions. If you didn't want to lie on your back and bench you could shoulder press... If you didn't want to back squat you could front squat etc. I'm still healing that little navajo piece from a fortnight ago right now. The only thing I needed to do for that was wear pants to the gym in lieu of my usual shorts... Pretty handy compared to a newly healing backpiece! -- As way of a general training update, I'm still doing Westside for skinny bastards (I'm on my fifth week of it now). Lower body day was today. I'm doing three days of lifting only and I'm going to add in a fourth day of conditioning only (prowler, farmer's walks, maybe some KB or DB metabolic conditioning).

I'm reading Neal Asher's 'The Departure'. Colossal fascist socialist world government is attempting to exterminate billions of their 'zero asset' citizens so there are enough resources to go around and keep them in the style they're used to. The anti hero protagonist is a super hacker / amnesiac genius intent on taking revenge on them for his torture blah blah blah So far it's so so, although the dystopian world government Asher depicts, with its sprawling inefficient and unchallengeable bureaucracy and unelected senior officials feels frighteningly plausible.

I recognise that one! Great work...

I'm feeling a little ill these days.., it could definitely be yellow poisoning, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Might call in sick tomorrow and do some more research on the internet.

None! Not being macho, but the only stuff I took days off work for were my back and front, when I had lining done and didn't want my shirt and pants sticking to me (horrible feeling). I agree lower leg tattoos bring swolleness and pain, but sitting at home with them would be overkill, IMO. Save those sick days for when you want to go surfing on the sly, or drinking beer.

In my opinion, I would still strive for:- Twice Body weight deadlift One and a half times Body weight squat Body weight bench strict body weight pull ups ... A decent amount, whatever that is, although body weight is a factor here. Irrespective of weight I think these are achievable benchmarks for someone to reasonably expect to achieve in a couple of years, bar injury. Dan John has some good stuff on this... I've never done 5/3/1 but I think most people seem to hit the barbell goals easily enough with something like 5x5 or Starting Strength. You can probably make linear progress right up to them, by turning up and just adding weight in increments. I hit those targets just doing CrossFit, which is not exactly a strength biased program.

Yep, I've read it (I think I even posted in it). What I posted above doesn't necessarily apply only or even mostly in relation to tegaderm though... Actually it's even more relevant if applying a product of some kind. My latest tattoo: I wash it, keep it clean and have otherwise literally forgotten about it. If it gets really really arid I might lightly moisturise it, but basically I'm just letting the body do it's own thing. The less fussing and handling the better.

Less is almost always more: less product, less handling... Keep it clean and protect the surface but otherwise generally try not to keep fiddling with it. This gels well with a dry or drier approach to healing, in my experience.

Om nom nom

Yang is indeed one handed. Quite amazing how he still manages. There's a little video of him floating around and you can see that he has found ways to use other parts of his body to help him do things like set up machines. Pinching it between his legs, using his chin etc. He told me he feels like he gets a little tired doing long sessions but if you compare his work to other people's it's obviously not holding him back at this stage.

I saw this collaboration one-shot backpiece by Yang and Ching from East Tattoo in Taiwan, done at the Paris convention, and thought it was worthy of this thread. Ching did my back and one sleeve, so obviously I'm a fan of their work, but I thought this was really funky. You can see a little of Ching's Filipino Leu backpiece here. The rest of his stuff is mostly by Yang. Pics from their Instagram.

Yeah very cool. I think his flash is also very creative, it's always something you think 'I would get that'.

Navajo style filler by Paul O'Rourke, AllStar Tattoo, from today.

I was just thinking about this thread a few days ago.... It doesn't deserve to die! I'm doing Westside for Skinny Bastards again, on the third week. Been doing prowler pushes or sled drags 2-3 times a week for conditioning, but not much, I'm horribly de-conditioned. I like home training too, but I only go through a few weeks of it before I start to get cabin fever and crave going to a gym full of people. Then I go to a gym, get angry at people curling in the squat rack while wearing parachute pants and backwards caps, realise that I am a mysanthrope and I go back to my house for another cycle of hermit training.

Earlier in this thread you explained that you are largely indifferent to how the things you say make other people feel. It's clear that you don't feel you need to consider the views or needs of other people, so what makes you think anyone is going to comply with some grandiose demand to help you erase all signs of your presence on the forum? Since you've got here you've repeatedly demanded advice, opinions and validation, and yet readily admitted that you couldn't care less about the community here. I suspect that there are probably enough kind-hearted posters and admin here who genuinely try their best to help out everyone, irrespective of how badly they behave, that you'll linger on here for another while. For a while. Eventually, though, with any luck, one day after furiously alienating the hell out of yet more people who try to help you ..... BANG!!! It'll be a ban-hammer right between the eyes. And maybe after that, from time to time, when things are really slow we'll go "Remember old Matthew Thomas? I wonder if he ever got that star fixed...".

@peterpoose I'm trying to even visualise how you'd do 19 hours... Incredible. Did you start at 10AM and go right through into the night, or how did it go? Breaks for food? Dd you guys have a few drinks? Enquiring minds want to know...

I'm not going to weigh in on this too heavily. I don't have any kids (but our first is on the way!). When I look back, I started to think about getting relatively heavily tattooed when I was 20. I was on the fence between a japanese half sleeve and going for the kind of spiky black tribal that George Clooney had in 'Dusk till Dawn'. When I read lately in a tattooist interview about people turning up in tattoo shops saying they wanted 'tribal like Clooney in 'Dusk till Dawn' ' I laugh, because I was that kid. The thing is, after a few years breathing space I'm really glad I didn't get that full tribal sleeve. I didn't go below the elbow in the end until I was 30, and I had reached a position in my career where it wasn't a problem. If I'd gotten that tribal sleeve when I was just turning 21 then maybe things wouldn't have turned out as well for me in terms of my working life. Everyone is an individual, and maybe some people get wisdom earlier than I did, but when I look back I'm pretty pleased that the mistakes I made early in my tattoo-collecting career are small ones. If I had been able to get tattooed in my teens, before I was 18, I really dread to think what I would have opted for. I probably would have ended up with a black and grey tribute to Arnold Schwartzenegger action movies or something. My wife and I joke about whether we will live vicariously through our child when it's old enough to get tattooed. It'll probably rebel against having heavily tattooed parents by finding tattoos ridiculous or old-fashioned. But if not, and if it wants to get tattooed young, I think the angle I would go is to try to encourage them to wait until they're 18-20 at least. And then I'd promise to help them out with the money needed to get tattooed by a legit artist of their choice. I'd don't know how realistic that is, but there you go.

@Padji Ha ha, OK... So say you're looking at the picture on Instagram. You can take a screenshot of what you're seeing by pressing the home and sleep buttons simultaneously ( How to take a screenshot with the iPhone | iMore ). The picture you've taken will appear in your camera roll on the phone. When you open it up it's possible to select 'edit' and then a few options will appear along the bottom of the screen. The icon on the bottom right is 'crop photo' and that should allow you to trim out whatever you don't want in the photo. Save the new picture when you're done, and bob's your uncle, you have a picture to upload if you want. We're on the same page then...! Paul helped me out with a touch up on my elbow before, he's a nice guy. I was going to say that there are a lot of dubious tattoo shops in Dublin (seems like the number of shops has reached epidemic proportions lately), and that really there probably isn't a great concept of what is 'good tattooing' among the general public... But you could probably say that about anywhere. Even when you go to somewhere like London or NYC where there's a really well developed tattoo scene with world-class artists you can still turn the corner and find a shop which is mutilating people.

Welcome @Padji To get the Instagram picture you could always screen cap it and the edit the picture, cropping out whatever you don't want. There may be an easier way but I'm a technological illiterate. Paul Aherne in Spilled Ink would be my pick for Japanese, traditional or most street shop type bits and pieces. Classic Ink in Temple Bar has Tommy (Triple T) who, I'm told, has a lot of history with some tattooing legends like Bob Roberts, Freddy Corbin etc. his traditional style is very very old school. Also does some nice script and fine line black and grey. Interesting shop to look in on, a lot of hand painted flash on the walls. There are a few reputable realistic black and grey / colour realism guys in Dublin but it's not my thing and can't really recommend anyone. Frankly, the best tattoo shop in the country, by a country mile, is Ross Nagle's AllStar in Limerick. The footfall of guest artists through there is unparalelled. It's worth getting the train or driving down to. Chris Crooks is a train ride away in Belfast. Long waiting list but his 'new school' Japanese is very popular here now. His shop White Dragon also has guests like Yang and Ching from East Tattoo come through also, worth a look for oriental style tattooing. Luckily London and other Ryanair destinations are also on out doorstep.