Day 10- Worlds Expo, Osaka
Day 10:
私たちの生活のための未来の社会を設計する
The Worlds Exposition and Fair 2025! The long anticipated day Dan was most looking forward to was here. Neither of us had ever been to one, and to be honest we went in with low expectations.
A little background first, as always. The Expo 2025 will be held with the aim of achieving a society in which the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—17 sustainable development goals set out have been achieved. With five years remaining until 2030, the target year for achieving the SDGs, 2025 is an extremely important year for accelerating efforts to achieve them.
Furthermore, it aims to realize Japan's national strategy: Society 5.0 ("super smart society"), which is a society, after the information society, industrial society, agrarian society, and hunter-gatherer society before it, that brings prosperity to people by making the most of integrating cyberspace and physical space.
Now, how we got here. In order to attend, you had to enter a lottery months ago, and not finding out if you won until the following month. Each person attending had to be identified ahead of time, and the tickets connected. In order to go in April, we had to enter the December lottery and found out in january. We won the first requested date. You then had to select the time of arrival (a 30 minute window), as well as what entrance you’d enter through. We selected the east gate, as that is the only entrance with the a subway station.
Once you “won” tickets (which you paid for), you could then try and make reservations yourself specific pavilions. This was also a lottery, and if you won, you couldn’t make additional reservations (enter other lotteries). They had lotteries at the 3 month, 1 month, 7 day, and day of once you entered. If you made it day of, and it was in the afternoon, you couldn’t make any until that time slot was over. It was a mess. Needless to say, we didn’t win any advance lottery reservations.
The days leading up to our day, online reviews and feedback started appearing on social media, how 140,000 were allowed in, it was gridlock and hours long waits for standby at pavilions, food, shopping and just space. We were getting nervous and fern contemplated selling our tickets.
But, with it being a gorgeous day, we made the trek to the waterfront location. Easy to get in, as our time slot was 10am. And then the waiting started. I applaud the Japanese for being efficient and orderly at pretty much everything they do. But there has to be a balance with common sense and practicality. It didn’t work here.
The site itself was massive, completrly encircled by a huge wooden walkway. The were 6 different zones spread out, each a different theme: Connecting Lives; Empowering Lives; Saving Lives; Signature Zone; Forest of Tranquility; and Future Life.
There were country pavilions by over 150 nations, non-governmental organizations (ex: Doctors without Borders), transnational organizations (ex: United Nstions or the European Union), abc pavilions dedicated to causes like Women, Health, the environment, technology, and water.
Dans number one destination was Future Life, where there were demos of flying cars and robots. We didn’t get in. We couldn’t get in the American one either.
Some of the ones we did make it in were France,
the Philippine’s,
Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Spain
and Turkey. Our fault for not doing much research prior to attending, but again, low expectations. Many of the pavilions seem to be vacation ads. Others were corporate sponsored therefore had the sponsors items for sale. Each one had a souvenir shop and food stand specific to their country.
By about 5, Dan had had enough and decided to trek back to rest and get ready for our next and final day in Osaka. I toughed it out, focused on getting as many stamps in my expo passport book.
I ended up with 103 pavilion stamps.
Why and how you ask? Some of the smaller countries literally had just a booth in these common halls, where you could visit 20-30 countries in a short time frame.
The centerpiece of the site was a lake in the middle. At the end of the night, the water and light show called Under the Midnight Rainbow was fantastic. Disneyesque, but not Disney. With all the people crammed in the middle trying to watch, i took advantage to walk back to the subway.
With low expectations, i was still disappointed at the whole reservation system. With everything being so schedule heavy, it takes the spontaneity out of it. Overall, a cool unique experience but probably won’t attend again unless it happens to be local like SF, LA or Vegas.
Final step count was 20,810 and 9.34 miles.
