Mica Burton Instagram – This is a bit of a long post, but bear with me; I put a lot of love into it đź©·. If you’ve been following me for more than 5 minutes, you’ll know that I like One Piece. I don’t have the time (or character limit) to go into detail about how formative the series is for me and has touched my heart blah blah blah. So for my next “belated Japan posting” installment, ONE PIECE ADVENTURES!
I purposely planned my trip to be able to celebrate one of my favorite character’s— Trafalgar Law— birthday! I spent the day hanging out with other Law fans in Shibuya, language barrier be damned. I went to about 5 Mugiwara stores (and spent an amount of money on merch and figurines I’m ashamed to admit), went to the One Piece museum only 2 days after it opened where they displayed every page of the manga from chapter 1-1100, but best of all, I did the “One Piece pilgrimage”.
The creator of the manga, Eiichiro Oda, was born in Kumamoto Japan. Around the prefecture there are large bronze statues placed in many different locations as a part of a project to help Kumamoto recover from an earthquake with a generous donation from Oda. So like many fans, I took a 7 hour bullet train trip to Kumamoto, bought my first straw hat, spent ~7 hours getting to as many statues as I could (only 5/10 but they’re some of my fave crew members), slept one night in a ryokan, then travelled home the next day. The only reason I could see so many is because of an INCREDIBLE taxi driver that asked via a translator if I planned to see the other statues, and offered to take me to as many as he could, cutting the meter when I got out to take pictures. He didn’t speak a word of English and I’m nowhere near conversational, so we chatted for hours via an app and I cried from how grateful I was when he dropped me at my hotel.
So, all this to say, my One Piece adventures were amazing. Not just because of the merch and themed things, but because this franchise literally transcended language barriers so strangers could all enjoy something we care about.
If you read all of this, I love you. Go watch One Piece. The content is worth the time. | Posted on 20/Nov/2024 05:34:25
