Our Travels In Japan (and other places): 2025 Osaka Expo!

Fortunately for me, I had very few symptoms of the plague. I just had every inch of my body ache and I felt like I had been run over by a truck for about 36 hours. Waking up this morning, I was a bit woozy and felt like my insides were bruised, but otherwise felt 100 times better than I did yesterday. Sumi, on the other hand, was still plagued (heh) by congestion and, as a result, coughing, even though she had been mostly over it for a few days.

With that as our base state, and a day expected to hit 100ºF (38ºC) with near 100% humidity and bright sunlight, we took all the precautions we could. We made sure our legs were covered, brought our opaque umbrella to use as a parasol, obviously had sunscreen, and brought a ton of water. With all that, we accidentally left early. Our tickets were for 9:00AM, and our only scheduled event was 10:30, so we didn't feel we needed to get there all that early. But we ate a very unsatisfying breakfast at the hotel and found ourselves at the expo an hour early.

It was free, but still...

So we get there at 8AM. It's already 88ºF (31ºF) and there is no shade in the corral they have us waiting in. Speaking of waiting, I have said before that waiting in line is a Japanese pastime. The Japanese wait in line more than anyone I know. Arriving an hour before the expo opens, there are a few people already there

Like, a few thousand people.

We started thinking that perhaps it was a good thing we got here early. There were literally over a thousand people already in line. There were people who had 10AM entry tickets that were already lined up. So we got in the corral with everyone else and did everything we could to stay covered.

Some people had the most amazing portable stools I have every seen and I want one.

They telescope out into stools. Packed up, they are a disc the size of a thick frisbee.

Not having a magical stool, we stood huddled under our one umbrella and sweated. Like, a lot. By the time we started moving, we were both drenched from just standing. At 8 in the morning. I don't usually have an issue with heat. This was brutal. We finally got through security and into the expo just after 9.

This is Myaku-Myaku, the mascot of the expo. Mascots are almost universally cute. Some people find a blob with too many eyes cute. Young girls all over the expo were wearing headbands with extra Myaku eyes on them. There are eyes added to things all over the expo. The wheels of the electric scooter things for elderly attendees have eyes on the wheels. The whole thing is slightly unsettling to me, but they seem to like it. Sumi thinks it's kinda cute too. There is no accounting for some tastes.

We stopped at the restrooms first to clean up and put on sunscreen. I watched them carting several people on stretchers to the emergency area. It was only 9:15. There is a huge wooden ring structure that encompasses the entire expo grounds called the Grand Ring. The upper level of the ring gives a great view of the entire grounds. It's really impressive and serves multiple purposes, the chief one today being the only shade available in the expo. We spent a lot of time walking under the ring, but it was also convenient in that there were benches, shops, vending machines, maps, and upcoming event displays throughout the ring.

We spent much of the day ducking into air conditioned pavilions and looking at the displays. There were a lot of interesting things to see and do. Many of the big pavilions had long lines to get in (again, Japan's national pastime), so we...didn't go into them. We never waited more than 10 minutes for any of the exhibits, so we missed some of the more elaborate displays, but with only one day, we didn't want to spend most of it standing the sun waiting to get into a building for 20 minutes. So we explored all five of the "Commons" pavilions that housed numerous small country exhibits and a bunch of smaller pavilions.

The best way I can describe what the expo is like is if you are from southern Wisconsin, and you are familiar with the Milwaukee International Folk Fair, it is like that if the fair had a billion dollar budget, real performers on the stages, and really cool buildings. For those not familiar with the Folk Fair, it is an annual exhibition where people representing countries from all over the world have an exhibit set up to inform and educate people about their country. And food. Lots of international food. And some performances by local cultural groups.

The expo is obviously more than that, but that's the overall feel. The only big pavilion we had access to with a reservation was the Future City exhibition, with an excellent mini diorama of a sustainable eco-friendly future city developed by Osaka Metro University and some corporate partners. It alternated through daytime and nighttime. It had robot cars that drove through the streets (and signaled when turning). The train stopped at its stations. It was really well done.

Here are some shots of the outsides of some of the larger pavilions

Actual speakers that vibrated the mirrored exterior when music played. Looked very cool.

Giant Gundam (or life-sized? Not sure.)

The major water feature they had built had to be shut down due to a serious bacteria infestation in the pipes (Legionella). It is still shut down, which is a shame, but I'll take the no catastrophic lung disease version of the expo.

Cool looking fountain, though

There were some performances occurring throughout the day, as well. We watched a comedy act that wasn't terrible. Most Japanese comedy, from what I've seen, consists of a lot of yelling. Everything is over the top loud and louder. On TV, it will include large subtitles to emphasize what is supposed to be funny, just in case you couldn't hear the yelling. It is unsubtle, it is overacted, it is often slapstick. I have seen very funny Japanese anime and movie clips, so I KNOW they have a good sense of humor, in general and can write and perform good comedy. Why their standup and skit comedy is so painfully bad, I can't understand. This one was short (30 minutes) and was a mix of "comedy" and doing some cool tricks, like solving a Rubik's cube, making increasingly difficult dice towers, etc. It was fun, overall. Then we saw over at the Thai pavilion a Monkey Dance and a short drum and dance performance. Both were quite good. I would have loved to have seen more of the drum and dance portion. I wish we had a better clip to share, but it gives a sense of the kind of drumming they were doing.

As the night wore on, the pavilions started lighting up

That's a giant LED screen taking up the entire roof

Finally at sundown, we settled down to watch the drone show. It was quite well done, timed to music and quite artistic.

People lined the upper level of the ring to watch. We watched from the steps by the water

Exhausted, we made our way back to the hotel, happy that we managed to last the whole day without incident, despite just getting over being sick and the rather extreme weather. I didn't post most of what we saw or did, as it wouldn't translate well to a blog, but here are some of the "better" pictures from the day.