Ariana Grande’s attempt to fix her bungled Japanese tattoo only brought more attention to the mistake.
She had hoped to pay homage to her number 1 single, 7 Rings, with a Japanese Kanji tattoo, but the tattoo actually read “small charcoal grill” in Japanese.
Unfortunately, her attempt to fix it only brought more attention to the mistake.
She had the tattoo artist add the kanji character for finger after consulting with her Japanese tutor amid the backlash.
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“Slightly better. Thanks to my tutor for helping me fix and to @kanenavasard for being a legend,” she wrote alongside a photo of her new ink on Instagram Wednesday. “And to my doctor for the lidocaine shots (no joke). RIP tiny charcoal grill. Miss u man. I actually really liked u.”
Uh, no.
“Japanese can be read in vertical columns going right to left, top to bottom. It also can be read left to right like in English,” explains Kotaku East.
The original mistake was the top two figures which reads “small charcoal grill” (七輪) kanji. In attempt to fix it, Grande added the kanji 指, meaning “finger.”
Kotaku East explains, further: “This addition attempts to turn the kanji 輪, meaning wheel or hoop, into the word 指輪 (yubiwa), meaning ‘ring’ as in for a finger, and mitigating the BBQ kanji. However, the kanji 指 and 輪 are split into different lines, so it looks weird. In English, this would be like writing ‘rings’ as ‘ri’ and then ‘ngs’ in another paragraph,” something, Japanese schoolchildren are taught not to do.
Read right to left, top to bottom, the “correction” now reads: “Small charcoal grill, finger *heart*.”
Kotaku explained that the original tattoo located on her palm contains the Kanji character “七” meaning “seven” and “輪” meaning a “hoop”, “circle”, “wheel”, or “ring.” However, when the characters are combined, it creates a different meaning — “shichirin”, or “small charcoal grill.”
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