The only item on today’s itinerary was the Osaka World Expo. It was quite the process to arrange: tickets purchased last December, then lotteries two months and two weeks in advance for pavilions. The lottery system and online pavilion browser are so user-hostile that I had to watch a video and use someone’s spreadsheet.
We queued up with hundreds of others in the hot sun, waiting for the gates to open. It was interesting to see the assortment of individual sun protection strategies in use. Sun parasols and removable sleeves are particularly popular with women, and some people have jackets that zip up nearly to the eyes, or the occasional vest that has built-in fans. No individual sun protection is as good as a nice big block of shade though! It’s baffling that the Expo hasn’t set something up, as surely this queue at opening exists every day.
Once we were through security the crowd fanned out and we could properly take in the huge mass-timber ring that surrounds the expo. It is breathtaking. We walked quickly and made it to our reservation at the Gundam pavilion on time. It was basically a multi-room screen-based dark ride, with rumbly effects and a lot of fan excitement.
There is a lot of see at the expo, even without reservations. I saw people complaining online about some smaller country booths being little more than travel advertisements, but I guess I like that stuff? It’s neat to see how a country chooses to showcase itself, whether it’s cultural artifacts or agricultural goods or in the case of Ukraine, short videos on the horror of life affected by war. It was fun to cover our Gundam booklet with stamps from each country we visited.
Our other reservation was for the Japan pavilion, which had a high-concept look at some technological innovations related to the environment and energy. The space was beautifully designed but I wish it had more content.
Thumbs up: friendly people representing their home countries, grand ring, building facades, organization & flow inside pavilions, and availability of all-gender bathrooms
Thumbs down: day-of reservation system, queues to refill water bottles, information scarcity about pavilions, and absence of cooling solutions like misters
We stayed long enough to see some of the evening lights but left before the drone show. Soren said something like “I think ten hours is enough.” Agreed.
(23 478 steps)
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