Adventures in Japan

At least Disneyland's got rides

Well I guess if Tyler's finally gotten around to writing about fireworks, I should probably say something about the World Expo we attended last week in Nagoya/Aichi.

Even though we went on a Monday, lines for all the "best" attractions were obscenely long. I don't know if they really were the best attractions because I sure as hell wasn't about to stand out in the sun for 3+ hours to find out. But here's what some of them looked like from the outside.


The Toyota Pavilion had some sort of robot show, Hitachi's had something to do with endangered species, and I think Mitsubishi showed a show about what life would be like without the moon. There were others. They were all crowded.

The corporate pavilions weren't the only ones with impossibly long lines to get in. The remains of a frozen mammoth were apparently very popular. Same goes for the world's largest kaleidoscope. I mean, look at it! It's almost 50 metres tall.


There were kaleidoscope-type images around the outside, but somehow I think it just wasn't the same.


So if we didn't see any of the corporate pavilions, and we didn't see any of the big non-corporate ones, what did we see? Well, we spent a lot of time wandering between the various Global Commons and checking out the national pavilions. (But, you know, none of the popular ones with lines.) It was kinda like Mosaic, but with bigger budgets and less raucous drinking.

One of the longest lines we actually did wait in was for food. Foolishly, we weren't keeping track of the time and didn't realize that it was noon until we discovered we were absolutely starving. So yeah, we queued for what felt like a very long time to buy some African food, because we had heard it was some of the best at the Expo. Meh. I've had better. Better and cheaper.

Near the African food was a collection of stalls/booths representing various African countries. They were all selling coffee. Some handed out free samples. My sympathies to anyone unfortunate enough to come between a middle-aged Japanese woman and free coffee. All elbows and shoving, they are. Poor Tyler. He didn't even get to try it. The coffee, I mean. He got plenty of shoving.


Many of the African stalls also had really old skulls on display. It was almost like a competition to see whose heads were the oldest. The Ethiopian corner had the remains of Lucy under glass, which was kinda cool, but no one paid much attention to it. I guess because it wasn't handing out free coffee.

We also waited to see the Croatian Pavilion, which turned out to be mostly about salt.


Luckily, our compatriots over at the Canadian pavilion let us cut to the front of their line. Or rather, they let us sneak in the back door. Lovely people! I even let them take my picture. If you poke around on their website and look for the Teku-Jin Webshots, you can find a picture of Tyler & me on August 29 in the 10:00-11:00 timeslot.

We visited other pavilions, but I can't think of much to say about them. Singapore's looked pretty impressive, but it was impossible to get in without a reservation. The food in the restaurant around back was really good though. And we caught a teeny bit of Korea's pavilion as the park was closing down. It seemed really well put together and I would have loved to spend more time there (or at least seen the 3D movie) but we made the mistake of stopping to eat once more before we left and the Turkish ice cream slowed us down. It's like ice cream, but stretchy!


So Tyler, what of that big summer rock festival? Worth the ¥50,000 we paid to see it?

P.S. The Shinkansen bullet train is awesome!