Your top two characters 生现 doesn't mean anything as combined characters. When separated, the first one means live and the second one means now. So I suppose that's where you got the idea that it meant live for now. But actually when combined, the two characters become meaningless. Sorry.
And yeah, the third character means Friend. You're missing another character to make it friendship. that'd be "友情"
Jan 22, 2010 Rating
Oops! by: Anonymous
The tattoo you have under the butterfly does not actually mean "friendship," it means "friend." As for "生現," I couldn't find that combination of characters in any dictionary. The closest thing I found was "現生," pronounced "gen nama." It's a slang term meaning "real money."
A lot of people seem to have gotten this "live for today" tattoo. It seems to be a literal and inaccurate translation working from English to Japanese. The first character means "life," but it also has a lot of other meanings. The second character means "appear," but, in combination with the character for "exist," it also means "now" or "at the present time."
If you want to get a tattoo that means "live for today" in Japanese, I would suggest this idiom:
"一期一会." It means "seize the day" and is pronounced "ichi go ichi ei."
Feb 28, 2009 Rating
Live for today by: Anonymous
I also have the 'live for today" characters tattooed on me, they are the same as yours. I hope for our sake that they are right!
