"The Mother Ten Thing Are Expensive"
Via Flickr, I saw this photo with caption of "Cindy, a beautiful canvas". I wish I could say the same about the artist, but unfortunately the mistakes are so obvious.
The first character 母 is correct and means "mother".
The second one, I am not sure if it was suppose be a Christian cross, 十 means "ten" with four sparkling flares, or 米 means "rice" which also phonetically translated as America in Japanese.
The third one is a mistake. The character 物 is vertically mirrored. When written correctly, 物 means "thing, substance, creature".
The last character 貴 means "expensive, costly, valuable".
Even if all the characters are correctly tattooed, the translation would still be:
"The Mother Ten Things Are Expensive"
What does that mean exactly?
Update: Todd thinks this tattoo means "Expensive American Malt Liquor":
It is 母米物貴. "母米" is from "酒母米", as in "American malt liquor". The whole thing means "expensive american malt liquor".
Could anyone verify this?