Japanese style tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, showing pink cherry blossoms, a shaded pocket watch and a skull over dark swirling shapes.

Sakura, pocket watch and skull on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder and combines pink and white cherry blossoms with a Roman numeral pocket watch, a shaded skull, and a dark rosette-like flower. Soft greyscale shading gives the watch and skull a realistic, three-dimensional look, set against bold black swirling bands. The pink blossoms are the only strong colour, so the design reads mostly as black and grey with accents of colour.

Japanese Realism Upper arm Shoulder Cherry blossom Pocket watch Skull Clock Flower Swirl Rosette

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the wind off the harbour will take the words if you let it. My grandmother's grandmother kept the lamp on Kiri Skerry, and the sea out there had a habit of keeping time for nobody. The fishermen carried pocket watches on chains, the way their fathers had, and every one of them ran slow once the cherry blossom came down off the headland.

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One April a boy named Tomas Ferreira came over on the ferry carrying a silver watch that had belonged to his drowned uncle. The numerals were worn almost blank and the hands had stopped at a quarter past four. He asked the keeper to mend it. She told him she could not mend what the sea had decided, but she could sit with him while it ran down. So they sat on the rocks at dusk, watching petals drift past the rim of the light.

Night after night the boy wound the watch and listened to it. On the last evening of blossom the petals came thick across the water, pink against the black, and the hands jumped forward a full hour. The skull stamped on the case caught the lamplight, and Tomas understood he had been waiting for a sign that he might stop waiting. He opened his palm, let the watch drop into the swell, and watched the tide carry the hour out past the skerry.

Go on home now, the lamp is lit. Your own watch is running fast, I can hear it ticking from here.