By Airi from Japan.
I’m from Japan, and I have 19 piercings, with more to come. My first piercing was when I was 14 years old. My parents were extremely anti-piercings, and I didn’t even have my lobes pierced back then. My piercings were all DIYs though, due to the fact that there just simply were no piercing parlors, unless you went to one of those big cities like Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya. Fortunately my cousin was a brain surgeon, so he was my supplier. 😉
So back to the story. I did 15 out of 19 of my piercings in 9th and 10th grade, but I mean like, they were all on my ears. BORINGG! I wanted something more unique, adventurous, challenging. (I guess that’s the ‘downside’ of piercing, you sort of get hooked on it. Haha.) So my first actual body piercing was ‘down there’, and my second was my nipple, but since I want to talk about my favorite piercing, the belly button, I’ll skip them.
So the procedure and equipment were pretty easy; 14G disposable hypodermic needle, marker, disposable rubber gloes, mirror, clean room, ethanol…. You know the basics. However I also had a ruler that I wiped with ethanol to measure how much skin I wanted to go through. Piercers usually go with about 1cm, so that was also what I went with. I went through the standard piercing prodecure; disinfect, mark, and clamp. After emotionally preparing myself for the pain that was to come (not to mention all the adrenaline), I gently but swiftly pushed the needle through. It took me an extra little push to get the needle to come out the other side, but it wasn’t too bad. The pain was about 4/10. After the needle was through I followed through with a 316L surgical steel navel ring I bought at a local store, and voila it was done. It was pretty sore and I couldn’t bend down much for the first 4 or 5 days, but the pain diminished as time passed. It took about 3 months to heal; aftercare was the standard sea salt soak. I love this piercing! I can’t wait till I get more navel rings! 🙂