BODY: If you've noticed people in Shibuya scanning stickers on banana carts this week, there's a reason. Epic Games has turned central Tokyo into a playable map.
"Tokyo Treasure Hunters" launched on November 1 and runs through November 8, timed to the arrival of Fortnite's new season, Treasure Hunters: The Greatest Adventure Ever, and its One Piece collaboration. The premise is straightforward: QR codes bearing a "Jolly Llama" emblem — a mashup of One Piece's skull-and-straw-hat Jolly Roger with Fortnite's loot llama — have been hidden at locations across the city, starting with Shibuya and Shinjuku. Scan one with your phone and a digital stamp lands in your in-event passport.
Participants register on the official site and then receive their clues through an event LINE account, which drip-feeds hints rather than handing over a map. The installations lean into Fortnite's visual vocabulary: Peely-inspired banana carts, cat doors concealing codes, and One Piece wanted-poster photo spots sized for a selfie. Hunting hours run 9:00 to 20:00 on most days (17:00 to 20:00 on opening day, closing at 19:00 on the final day).
Collected stamps convert into entries in a lottery, not first-come giveaways. Prizes include One Piece × Fortnite posters and treasure boxes, with a gold Mercedes-AMG G 63 as the headline reward. The finale lands on November 7 and 8, when a giant treasure chest appears at the Takeshita exit of Harajuku Station.
The insider take
The format will feel instantly familiar to anyone who lives here: this is a stamp rally, the decades-old Japanese promotional ritual that normally involves train stations and a paper card, re-skinned for a global shooter. Two choices mark it as locally built rather than imported. Using LINE instead of a dedicated app removes the only real friction point for Japanese users. And planting the climax at Takeshita-dori on a weekend is a deliberately bold call — Shibuya and Harajuku have spent the past few years tightening crowd control, especially post-Halloween, so a giant chest at the mouth of Tokyo's most congested shopping street is a statement of confidence as much as a finale.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).