Osaka Expo - Seeing “the world” in a day
Or rather: seeing lots of videos in a day of crowded spaces and long lines.
After an uneventful arrival in Japan (yay direct flight on Hawaiian from Seattle), jet lag woke us up early on Thursday. So early, in fact, that there weren’t even many breakfast options. After getting ready for the day, we popped into a cute cafe in one of the malls attached to Osaka station for a very western-style breakfast. This somehow means a side of salad is included (we’ve had this experience before, so we weren’t surprised, but still…).
We then took the train to the expo. We had to change trains at a station where it seemed a lot of other people were also changing trains to go to the expo. And that meant it was crazy. CRAZY. The queues of people waiting to board by each train door were long, but fairly organized (as is normal in Japan). However, the first car that came was only for students and disabled. Some able-bodied adults pushed onto it anyway, but most people just waited. The next train was so packed we barely got any movement in our queue. Finally, the train after that had enough space for us to squeeze in.
Similarly, when we arrived at the station for the expo, it was a sea of humanity flooding toward the entrance gate.
Once inside, we didn’t have as much time as we had planned before the one pavilion reservation we were able to get in advance (more about reservations later), so we strolled directly there, crossing the middle of the expo grounds. There are a number of pavilions that are just beautiful, and we passed by many of them:
We also passed through the forest of tranquility in the middle, which was beautiful and relaxing, and one of the few non-crowded spaces.
Our reservation was for the Blue Ocean Dome, which focused on the impact of plastic waste on the world’s oceans. It had a beautiful water sculpture inside the first space, then a moving video about ocean life and the way plastic can impact it. Finally, it left us in a small geodesic dome made of wood and cardboard where we saw a pixar-esque video about cardboard recycling, sponsored by a Japanese company that was self-promoting. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t catch some feels watching two cardboard boxes walk hand-in-hand (flap-in-flap?) down the beach. Trust me, you’d have to have seen it.
We wandered a bit and came across a cool-looking pavilion co-sponsored by a corporation and a university, about a vision for a sustainable future city.
They also had a cafe inside, where we had surprisingly good beef curry for lunch!
We wanted to go into Taiwan’s “Tech World”, but the line was crazy long. Unfortunately, when we swung by later, they stopped even taking walk-ins (reservation only), so we missed our chance. When we saw Spain, the line wasn’t too bad (took about 20 mins), so we queued up. It had a really creative “all ramps” architecture. However, the exhibits inside were only okay.
After that, we walked past some more cool-looking structures, but decided to pop into the “common” buildings where the smaller (read: lower-budget) countries had their stalls. The first one we went into was definitely the lowest budget, having a “booth at a state fair” vibe, and having countries like Paraguay, Cabo Verde, Benin, and tiny island nations like Nauru, Tuvalu, and Timor-Leste. The highlight of that building was Jamaica. The second common building had more involved booths (think “storefront inside a shopping mall”), and included pretty cool displays from San Marino, Ukraine, and Gabon, among others.
We then upgraded to the “strip mall” pavilions nearby, for countries that had their own entrance and exit, but were technically in a shared building (like a townhouse or strip mall). Chile’s was fairly lame, Tunisia did some cool immersive projection and had a cafe and live metal working inside. Cambodia focused on Angkor Wat and its temples in general, which was cool. Then we found the shared Baltics pavilion, which contained all the Baltics: Lithuania, Latvia, and… wait, no Estonia?? Rude. Inside, it was focused on the native plants from their region, which was a bit boring, but they did have a water wall you could sort of write on, if you don’t fear touching a wet wall that everyone else is touching too.
After ramping up from small to medium, it was time to go up a notch yet again, so we headed to Thailand, which we had passed earlier, and waited in line. Luckily, we happened to be there when they did a 10 minute show outside for everyone waiting. Once inside, we were treated to another show of a sort… Look, Thailand honestly had a pretty weak pavilion (for a standalone one), but the staff was amazing. While we waited outside the theater (yay, another video…), the staff started telling us about food, then tried to rally the crowd to sing a song about fried chicken (with special sauce) with them. They were at a 100% energy the whole time, even when the crowd wasn’t. In the back, there was a cafe that looked great (especially after all the talk/singing about food), but we weren’t hungry yet.
After this, to be honest, we were already starting to run out of steam, especially with the jet lag, but we wanted to at least see a couple more “good” pavilions before leaving. The problem is, the reservation system SUCKED. The mobile app was one of the worst interfaces we’ve ever used, making Ticketmaster and the IRS seem delightful by comparison. As a result, we wasted too much time trying in vain to grab same-day reservations when we saw slots open up. Basically, every time we were in line for something, we tried to get a reservation for the future, but never succeeded. It always threw an error of one kind or another. Finally, I googled and found reddit threads of other people complaining about it. One person suggested going to the freestanding kiosks to book, but there was a line 30+ minutes long for those, and at that point, it’d make more sense to just wait in line for pavilions, rather than waiting in line to make one reservation (you could only have one queued up and could only make the next reservation after going to your first one).
Setting aside that rant, we still managed to see two more pavilions via just queueing up. The UAE had a wait less than five minutes, and once inside we understood why — it’s mostly about the cool structure (bundles of sticks!) than about any exhibits, so we didn’t end up spending too much time there. Their cafe did look nice, but that had a long wait. I was disappointed there wasn’t a scale model of the Burj Khalifa, but I think they were avoiding over-focusing on any specific emirate.
The final pavilion we saw was, thankfully, the best of the day. Poland focused on interactive exhibits. Even as we were waiting to enter, the staff taught us some basic words and phrases in Polish, translating everything between Japanese, English, and Polish. Then, we got to make our own spirit plant, leveraging a mix of stem, leaves, flowers, and aura (?) from the plants available. I assume they’re all plants you can find in Poland, but I’m not 100% sure.
They also had a room of plant samples suspended in some liquid, reminding us of the Baltics, but I liked this better. And some sort of mobile-like structure. Then we went into the brush room, where brushes played an arrangement of Chopin… but purely through swoosh noises of brushes against a wall. Kind of surreal, but it set a cool mood. On the way out they had a brief exhibit about the various things Poland is proud of (technology, culture, nature), including an exhibit about Polish video games, which basically centers on CD Projekt Red (Cyberpunk, the Witcher, etc). And we saw a wall with all our flower creations. There was a web interface where you could tap to have yours be briefly highlighted among the collage.
Poland definitely was the star of the show for us. We then took a stroll looking for more pavilions and things to see in general. Portugal had a live guitarist playing outside, which was great, and Austria and Switzerland (which neighbored each other here as they do in real life) had amazing designs. We walked along the great ring, which had lovely views but an intense wind. Also, the intense heat and humidity from earlier in the day had waned, so the gale-force wind on top of the ring actually made us cold. We briefly popped into the jellyfish pavilion, which was.. interesting, but we were also tired.
Finally, we hoped to see the water show at the end of the day. The ground level viewing area had a reservation-only section (which, again, we couldn’t get a reservation to), and some unreserved areas that were packed solid. Someone on reddit had suggested watching from above on the ring, so we went back up there, along with a lot of other folks. With all that wind and none of the sun, it was legit cold at this point. Then the show started, firing water cannons 25m in the air… which then blew DIRECTLY AT US. Whoops! We, along with a lot of the other people up there, basically just fled and gave up on the show, even though I heard it really is supposed to be a cool show. I guess we’ll watch videos online.
After briefly swinging by the expo shop on the way out, which was sold out of all the things we were interested in, we caught a train back to Osaka. Our feet hurt, our backs hurt, and the last hour had soured the experience a little, but thankfully we found a duck ramen shop near Osaka station that helped salvage our mood.
In the end, it felt like the pavilions were great, if a little too heavy on videos and generic content (dried plants and textiles were oddly common themes). But the venue itself was wholly unprepared for the volume of visitors. The train, the entry gate, the long lines (often 30+ minutes) for basic services like refilling a water bottle and the reservation kiosks. No wifi. On the plus side, there actually was plenty of food, minimal bathroom lines, the forest of tranquility in the middle, and the amazing wooden ring.
