Aichi Expo, Nagoya, Japan

Sunday, 15 May 2005

Last night, I caught the Shinkansen bullet train from Osaka to Nagoya, where Christina and her mom picked me up at the train station. It was so nice to see Christina, as we haven't seen each other in nearly a year! By 8:30 am this morning, we (Christina, her husband Andrew, their baby Max, and Christina's parents and brother who live here in Japan) were waiting in line with hundreds of others to get into the Aichi Expo. The Aichi Expo is basically the World Fair. It was $50 per person, so we figured we better maximize our time and spend the entire day walking around. Imagine Disneyland for adults. Long lines, long lines to get "reservation tickets" to get in line again, and expensive food. We ran to the most popular exhibit first, the Toyota exhibit, which featured a high tech presentation of flashy robots, robots playing music and dancing. Pretty cool. Okay, maybe $10 cool. Better get my other $40 worth now.

My favorite part was visiting the different countries' exhibits and showrooms. Of course I had to see all of the Southeast Asian exhibits, and see how the portrayed Thailand and Laos and Cambodia. I wandered around by myself as Christina and Andrew and Max wanted to go on the ferris wheel and weren't so into looking at museum-like exhibits. You could get little glimpses of the artwork from these places, but of course nothing is like actually being there, hearing the language, seeing the hilltribe people in their native dress, and smelling the wild dogs all around. Perhaps as a consolation for not smelling the mangy dogs, we actually won two photos of ourselves at the Mammoth exhibit and got to take our pictures with the Wooly Mammoth. Being at the World Fair was surreal with all these technologically advanced buildings and structures, the largest kaleidoscope and the fuel cell generated hybrid bus we rode in (with no driver!).

On the way home to Christina's aunt's house, after a long 12 hours at the Expo, we stopped by Ichiro's house, who grew up in the neighborhood. Apparently, during the day, his parents charge $10 admission to come and see his "museum" and house. A long day, and in the morning, we're off on the road again to the town of Ise, where the Minato's live (friends of the family).