Monthly Archives: July 2012

One Piece isn’t an anime– it’s a way of life

For more photos from my trip, check out my tumblr!

Also, if you don’t know what One Piece is, this post will probably hold little significance to you. My apologies! As a One Piece fan, this is a little self-indulgent of me.

My tutor, who’s been to Japan, once told me this:

I was a little confused. I asked him to elaborate.

One Piece, for those who don’t know, is a manga/anime series that’s been running in Japan for over ten years. It’s about a quirky pirate captain, Monkey D. Luffy, and his quest to find the fabled treasure “One Piece” and become king of the pirates. Throughout his travels, he accumulates a small and equally quirky pirate crew and together they roam the seas. They challenge the elements, other pirates, and even the World Government, weaving a wacky tale of epic adventure.

One Piece also happens to be one of my favorite series, due to its skillful blending of humor and action. It’s kind of well-known in America, too, if you’re into Japanese manga and anime. And I knew it was popular in Japan.

But I was not prepared.

For just how popular it was.

One of the first things I noticed in Japan was just how prevalent One Piece was. One character from One Piece– Tony Tony Chopper– is this little reindeer… thing. He’s cute. Therefore, every single souvenir shop we went to had a whole section devoted to solely Tony Tony Chopper phone charms.

Of course, the phone charms weren’t limited to Chopper alone. There were plenty of the other characters as well.

Like Nico Robin.

The merchandise was not limited to phone charms. There were plenty of One Piece socks…

One Piece plushies…

One Piece bags of popcorn…

Even One Piece…bath salts?

A lot of the stores I went to had whole sections devoted to One Piece.

It got even crazier when I realized that a lot of the One Piece souvenirs were created for that specific area. For example, in Tokyo, we’d see phone charms, of, say, Tony Tony Chopper sitting on Tokyo tower.

Or, at Noboribetsu, a hot springs town, we’d see One Piece characters at the hot springs…

Or, at Sapporo Dome, we saw One Piece characters playing soccer:

Japanese souvenirs, as we found out, are a bit different in that way. One Piece wasn’t the only line of characters sold with their own specialized souvenirs. Hello Kitty, for instance, could also be found in most stores:

Though this just happened to be a whole store devoted to Hello Kitty.

Another commonly seen character was a bear named Rilakkuma:

There was even a Hokkaido-specific character called Marimokkori, a portmanteau of marimo (a type of green algae ball that grows in Hokkaido’s lakes) and mokkori (a slang term for “erection.”) As you’d expect, some of Marimokkori’s merchandise was a little… weird.

But One Piece was, by far, the most popular. It was everywhere. It pervaded daily life. One of our students had a host brother in elementary school who wore only One Piece t-shirts. I’d often ask people if they watched anime– and the answer would often be:

Occasionally it worked as a conversation starter.

The extent of the popularity of One Piece didn’t hit me, though, until I entered a book store. First, I saw the One Piece section:

And then I saw a book of One Piece… “party skills?”

And then I saw this series of books:

And finally, the kicker:

Therefore, my trip to Japan was one of the most trying times of my life. Due to temptation. To my wallet. 

So One Piece in Japan was extremely popular to the point where I was shocked. It’s kind of like the Harry Potter of Japan in terms of popularity, except in America there isn’t Harry Potter stuff in all the stores. Really, I’ve never seen anything just be that popular before. Luckily, I managed to practice some self-restraint and not buy everything…

I might have snagged a shirt or two at a Uniqlo, though.

On being American in Japan

For photos from my trip, check out my tumblr!

One interesting issue my group encountered while in Japan was the fact that we were gaijin. 

I mentioned it before, but I barely scratched the surface. I’ll explain again: the term gaijin, composed of the kanji 外 (outside) and 人 (person) literally means outsider. Gaijin is actually a bit of a colloquial term– if not sometimes derogatory– with the more formal term being gaikokujin (foreign-country person.) Japan, due to its long history of isolation, is a very homogeneous country. In other words, everyone is Japanese. As my language teacher put it,

And it’s true. 98.5% of Japan’s population is, well, Japanese. And to split up the remaining 1.5%– 0.9% of Japan’s residents are Korean or Chinese, and only 0.6% are from other countries. Gaijin. We are rare. 

So we encountered some interesting behavior as a result.

We’ll start with the middle school kids. Two places I encountered in particular– Nara and Kiyomizudera— are popular locations for school trips. As a result, both places are swarming with grade schoolers, many of whom aren’t shy:

Openly pointing, staring, and shouting are all fair game when you’re a gaikokujin. Not that it’s mean spirited– one thing we’d often hear was ikemen! (hot guy!) One Caucasian, glasses-donning kid on our trip even got

Nara and Kiyomizudera are popular attractions for tourists, as well. It seems as though Japanese teachers know this. Literally dozens of students stopped us on the streets to ask us school-assigned questionnaires in English:

Literally. Dozens. We almost missed the train home from Nara as a result.

As a group of 18 Americans, the gaijin complex was strong. I mentioned already that people were shocked that we could speak Japanese…

…and, even when we proved that we could speak Japanese, people would keep speaking English as though we couldn’t understand.

Granted, it’s because the standards for gaijin are so low in Japan. There are so many Americans who move to Japan, live there for years, and still not know a lick of Japanese. I can’t blame the Japanese for assuming that we can’t speak their language, because– truly and honestly– I can’t yet. Not well.

So we were novelties, and often treated as such. Every time we would take group photos together, there’d often be a Japanese person or two who’d surreptitiously snap a photo of us. 

And some were a little more forward. One girl in our group– tall, blond, blue-eyed– was asked by a Japanese guy to take a photo together.

On one of our last days we marched in a parade through Sapporo, traditional yukata and all. One student in our group, a half-Guatemalan girl, evoked one particularly strong reaction:

The stories go on and on and on. Not all are positive. Sometimes, we were intentionally served later in restaurants or on plane rides. One girl was ogled by passing boys who thought that she didn’t understand their sleazy comments. A Chinese student on our program was declared to be, by an elementary schooler, “Made in China.”

Most of our encounters, though, were not malicious in intent. Rather, they simply stem from a lack of understanding between the two cultures. Westerners in Japan are immediately branded with a set of stereotypes: can’t use chopsticks, can’t speak Japanese, loud and boisterous… and hey, a lot of the time, it’s true. So when my group defied these stereotypes, we were met with genuine surprise.

And the people around us were extremely welcoming. I stayed with an awesome host family, met some incredibly kind college students in Kyoto and Tokyo, and really just found people to be understanding of my, well, gaijin-ness. We got a lot of leeway, for sure.

Still, I wonder if the culture gap will one day be bridged. I asked one of my fellow students how he felt about the matter:

By the end of the trip, some of the kids were definitely a bit frustrated from being treated like a gaikokujin all the time. But, I suppose that’s what an exchange program is all about. Crossing countries. Knocking down stereotypes. Allowing us to share our culture in exchange for learning the culture of Japan. There are certainly tons of stereotypes about Japan floating around America. The more we learn about each other, though, the more we can realize the truth. It just takes a little effort and an open mind.

One of the most impressionable conversations I had was in Tokyo, where I met up with my Japanese friend from high school and his mom:

I only hope that, in the future, I can learn more and more.