Black line tattoo of Totoro sitting on a branch with red cherry blossoms, placed on a shoulder, in a Japanese-inspired style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Totoro and cherry blossoms on a shoulder

Japanese · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the cartoon character Totoro seated on a bare branch, with its ears, whiskers and belly outlined in black. Five red and orange cherry blossoms hang along the branch, which is drawn in black linework with some shading. The black outline dominates the design, with the blossoms adding small areas of warm colour against the skin.

Japanese Shoulder Totoro Cherry blossom Branch Flower Character

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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

Your mother will tell you I have gone soft, so I am putting this in writing before she gets to the kitchen first. Last Tuesday we were three hours out past the Dogger with the nets fouled and the glass falling, and I saw something sitting in the crook of the mizzen boom. Grey, round as a bolster, with ears up like a pair of wind-vanes. It had its paws folded on its belly and it was watching the water the way your grandmother watched the kettle.

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Pritchard swore it was a seal. Then Hollis swore it was a gull with a grievance. I said nothing, because it was the first thing in twenty-six years at sea that made me think the water might be listening. The creature hopped down onto the rail, shook itself out, and walked to the bow, where the bare branch somebody had lashed there for the Easter decorations was throwing out pink petals. There had been no petals on it when we sailed. I have asked Pritchard and he denies seeing anything, which is how I know he saw it too.

We hauled eleven stone of cod that night, more than we managed all of March. When I turned round at the wheel it had gone, and in its place on the rail were five blossoms, red at the edges and dry as paper. I have pressed them between the pages of the almanac for you. Don't let your mother find them.

I know what you will say: that your father has been out too long and needs a rest ashore. Maybe so. But the wind has come round to the south-west and we should be in by Friday. Meet me at the slip with the cart and bring the big gloves. I am bringing something you will want to see.