My 111th appointment with Horizakura was about 1.5 hours of outlining on my inner bicep and chest. Not a whole lot to say here, the pictures speak for themselves. I think the chest is probably one of the worst areas for me… especially as he get close to the nipple. There was a moment when he was tattooing my pec where I actually started to laugh because I couldn’t believe just how much it hurt. Certainly not unbearable, but boy oh boy am I not looking forward to our next appointment.

Speaking of my next appointment, the thought is perhaps another bonji and some cherry blossoms will finish the outline of my torso. I can’t believe how close we are to being done with the outline. Maybe only a few appointments left. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to finish the outline of my right forearm until I have a very, very minor surgery to remove a cyst. I could leave it but it annoys the piss out of me and I don’t want to get tattooed there and THEN decide it has to go. I really wish I could just find somebody in a back alley somewhere that will stab the damn thing and be done with it. I tried to convince the dermatologist to do it and she wouldn’t go for it. Hopefully I can get it taken care of soon so we can actually finish off the outline of the whole suit.

The only other item of note before it’s on to the pictures is that Horizakura shaved about 45% of my chest while he was planning out what and where he would tattoo me during this appointment. After I cleaned up this morning, I took a look in the mirror and realized I looked totally ridiculous with a half-shaved chest. As any reasonable person might do, I decided to go scorched earth on my whole torso. As I finish typing that, I wonder if this is actually even an item of note. Do I actually think anybody cares about the landscape of my chest hair? Would anybody have even noticed if I hadn’t said anything? You will never get back the time you just wasted reading this paragraph. For that, I apologize.

To the photos!

I don’t know how or why this happened, but I forgot to update this blog after my second to last appointment. Things have been a little busy at work, but that’s rarely gotten in the way in the past. Even then, when I forget to post I usually have at least taken photos. After my 109th appointment, the only photo I took was a quick selfie while I was in my office. I’m not in the habit of posting photos like that here, but it’s all we have to mark that session’s progress. On the rare occasion that this has happened in the past, I’ve also gotten lucky and Horizakura worked on a different part of the tattoo so I was easily able to capture update photos of both areas after the fact. That was not the case here as both appointments were working on the left side of my torso. Fortunately, this isn’t really all that complicated and you should be able to tell from what photos we do have what was done during each appointment. It’s certainly not a big enough deal for me to have written as much as I already have about it… yet here we are.

Appointments 109 and 110 were each two hours long which, after some very complicated math, totals 4 hours of tebori on my left side. Horizakura shaded portions of the armpit, ribs, hip, and even a couple bars on my stomach that were unfinished. The Sunday appointments have been a real bummer for my football watching, but in virtually every other aspect they are a huge win. This is something like 4 – 5 appointments in a row now, while still maintaining a fairly busy work schedule (including gigs on Tuesday that definitely would have resulted in a cancellation or two). I’ve also found that moving my appointments to noon, which is generally when my energy levels peak, has made the tattooing easier to endure as well. The ribs are generally known to be one of the tougher areas to have tattooed, but I have to say that I haven’t found them to be much of a struggle during these short, midday sessions. This reinforces what many people will tell you: how you treat your body before an appointment really does make a difference when getting tattooed.