A tourist in Osaka

I’m not sure at what point I questioned my desire to see the World Expo in Osaka. It could have been the train where despite the carriage being full several Japanese backed into the carriage jamming it even tighter, there was no room to move, the people just squished together as the train rocked around a corner. I struggled to stay balanced, but there was no where for me to fall, I’m sure a few japanese wish I didn’t crush them as much…. but hey apparently this is normal, but not for me.

The second moment was the massive lines to get into the expo, and this was 30 minutes before entry. Japanese love queues though, but not everyone sticks to queues as i noticed serveral people finding ways to jump the queues. I was really wondering if the queues were going to be worth it for the experience. Thankfully some respite came as once I’d enetered the Expo 2025 park the crowds rushed to the popular pavilions and I did my patriotic duty and visited the Australia pavilion, with a eucalypt forest inside and animals projected onto some screens, then a secon room was basically australias attempt at projecting onto a weird arrangement of screens. This I realised was a common theme for many countries, what shape screen can we project onto?

In the quiet that was the 9am entry time for the expo i managed to visit half a dozen pavilions with minimal ease. I strolled up the steps to the spanish pavilion greeted by a few “Hola’s”, my brain switched into spanish in a heart beat and blurted out “Como estas?” and a few sentences later my spanish was exhausted and i continued into the pavilion. Spain also had some projections and some things to do with the offical expo theme – “Designing Future Society for Our Lives“. Australias was about shasing the sun in a reference to harnessing solar, but it was very artistic. The Spanish pavilion had panels of info about science and how it will help in the future. Some other pavilions it wasn’t that clear, Saudi Arabia was more about telling the world they are friendly nowand here is how we are going to spend our oil money, the architecture of the pavilion was very reminiscent of how they build building in the middle east to keep cool though.

After the first half a dozen pavilions I could tell the 10am entry slot had opened as the crowds increased, what went from a relatively quite time in the first hour soon became a bit of a nightmare. I went and vicited some of the commons pavilions which are big exhibition halls with spaces inside for the samller countries, like Tuvalu and Benin, as well as larger countries without the monwey to build their own pavilion, like Tanzania, Croatia and the Ukraine (I think we know where there money is needed right now). The Ukrainian stand was very much a political message to both Russia and the USA.

All up I collected stamps from 48 countries which is quite an achievement. I doubt even with time I could collect them all, I’m just never going to queue for hours to go into a pavilion. My favourite stamps all came from smaller countries that didn’t just use the generic template like many did and had their own unique stamp like Cabo Verde showing where it lies off the coast of Africa, Nauru is shaped like the country and St Vincent and the Grenadines has a parrot endemic to their islands in the caribbean. San Marino had a unique stamp but not exciting, but i did love their striking display and despite it being a tiny republic in the middle of Italy, its mountain top location looks stunning and a country I’m sure to visit.

My final pavilions were not country pavilions at all but technology ones. Although I soon gave up on visiting the Pasona pavilion with Astroboy on the rook because well, it had a massive queue. Thankfully the Gundam pavilion which while essentially a japanese anime diod its take on living in the future. The pavilion was a multi room with multi screens adventure. We got whisked up the space elevator which looked and felt realistic with the vibrating floors. We got to the top and a rogue enemy robot started to attack the station and a Gundam unit came to save the day with some new weapon they’d developed. It was a fun experience, but more akin to a theme park than anything else. Outside there was a life size gundam statue which had a few lights and smoke, but didn’t appear to be able to move. It anyone is to develop giant fighting robots it will be the Japanese.

After a day of crowds you’d think I’d want a break, but alas when i bought tickets to Universal studios to visit Super Nintendo World, you had to be very quick and grab the express pass you wanted, while yuou could get it. This exercise meant spending over $200 so i could avoid the queue to some rides. After visiting I do not regret spending that money one bit. The normal waiting time for the Donkey Kong minecart madness ride which is what I want to experience was 180 minutes!!!! serious who is wasting 3 hours of time to ride on a ride. Once i managed to talk to someone who spoke enough english i found the express pass lane. 10 minutes wait maximum for a ride that probably went for 1 -2 minutes, was awesome and I’d have done it again…. except I would have to queue. I did note the single riders queue was long and about an hour or so but there were many groups in the lane knowing full well they wouldn’t ride together, but they’d get on the ride quicker.

While I was in Donkey Kong country I had the ice cream which was a tropical sorbet in a waffle cone with popcorn and chocolate cornflakes on top and that itself was sitting in a banana thickshake. Absolutely delicious and even with the souvenir cuop, not sure it was worth $20, but hey its a theme park, they are designed to part people from their money so before any more of that happened and with no desire to go and do the Jaws or Jurassic Park or any other things in Universal studios I hightailed it out of there, thankful I got to experience the marvel of what had been created with only a few thousand others at the same time. So the real question is do I go hang with the deers in Nara tomorrow, or have a quieter day instead. I expect crowds love deers also.