The Sakura Samurai

The Sakura Samurai was my entry for the Japanese Culture challenge some time ago. How the build came about was that I had just submitted my very first idea (The Herald) to LEGO Ideas. The plan was to only submit that one idea, no other ideas and most definitely not to participate in any of the activities or challenges on the site, because I’m just not that kind of builder. 

Literally a few minutes after making my decision that I would not take part in any challenges, I saw the Japanese Culture challenge and I had this idea for a 3D canvas with a samurai warrior, a cherry tree, and a bright red sun, but I still had no intention of building it, coz I’ve never done anything remotely like that and wouldn’t even know where to start. Then, over the next half an hour, the samurai’s story unfolded in my mind and that was it… now I had to build him… I owed it to him to tell his story. 

Anyhow, for the entire first day I just sat and stared aimlessly at some LEGO parts, picking up first one and then another and putting them back down, just to pick them up again as I waited fruitlessly for inspiration to strike. The next whole day was spent looking at countless artistic impressions of samurai warriors, which left me wondering how on earth I was going to make my samurai come to life with just these little plastic blocks that, yes, are very versatile, but are also very rigid and can only be made to fit together in very specific ways. Anyway, long story short, LEGO is awesome… and you can build things with it that you never thought possible… but you probably already knew that.

If you are curious about the little story of the courageous samurai and why his statue still stands on that mountainside under the ancient sakura (cherry tree), you can find it on LEGO World Builder.