Three characters presented for identification

[jdwtpsunset]

Long story short, a friend of mine and myself were at a Chinese restaraunt in town. My associate has a three-character tattoo on his neck, with characters he pulled out of an encyclopedia and compared to internet texts.

A worker walked up to him, and told him his letters were not his initials in Japanese, but stood for separate Chinese meanings.

Attached is a poorly drawn representation in mspaint I did, for purposes here to identify the meanings.

The worker told us they were, in order: Year, Tomorrow, and the last she was unable to define, amidst much laughing from her.

I compared the top character's meaning and did define it as "year" but the other two are unknown to us as of now, and I am not about to sit down and sift through hundreds of characters to define a tattoo.

If you can help, thanks!

http://www.2and2.net/Uploads/Images/unknown0.JPG

[roddy]

The top one is year, no issues there.

The middle one, when next to 'year' would mean 'next', but you'd have to be reading from bottom to top in your image. Individually it would mean bright / clear. If you are reading down, the two together can't be related. If it was next to the character for 'today' it would mean tomorrow, but it isn't.

The final one looks like nothing I've ever seen before.

Roddy

[carlo]

The last one looks a bit like 临 lin2

[roddy]

Well spotted, it does look like lin

Any chance of knowing what it is meant to say, or a photo of the neck in question?

Roddy

[HoustonRocket]

明年： (ming2 nian2) means next year, its attached word is "去年（qu4 nian2）means last year" ，a question here, why not use "下年 (xia4 nian2)" and"上年"？it looks a bit interesting, in chinese ,"明" detailly means"the next coming,or the following coming",so you can say"明天--tomorrow，明晨--next morning，明日=明天，but this is written and traditional way。。。"

"明"has another important meaning,for example"明亮--bright，明白---got it",here it mainly means "clear or crystal ". hope it would be helpful for you.