We went to the Aichi Expo today. Long day, lots of walking! It was interesting, though a bit disappointing. I didn't go in with hugely high hopes - all of my students praise it up and down, but all of the Westerners I'd talked to weren't very impressed. I wasn't able to see any of the corporate pavillions, which I'd expected. But I had expected to be able to see The Earth Tower (a huge, 64 foot high Kaleidoscope), but the line was gignormous and all of the tickets to see it for the day had been given out before we even arrived. There were some individual country Pavillions that we couldn't go to because the lines were just too long.
We did go to a bunch of individual country Pavillions, though. We went to Bulgaria, Turkey, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Ireland, Ukraine, Cuba, USA, Argentina, the Andean Amazons, and Central America. We were there about 7 or 8 hours, I think? It's a lot of walking.
I think the "coolest" Pavillion was the UK Pavillion. They had these interactive exhibits that were pretty fun. I took some short videos of some of them.
The friendliest Pavillion was the Tunisian Pavillion. They were really nice. The guys there were so excited to see Westerners (99% of the Expo crowd is Japanese). They gave us little vases with our names on them in arabic... Usually they cost money, but they said they were a "cadeau" (gift). They spoke french and were pretty cool. Unfortunately, my little vase got crushed over the course of the way. And the picture of me and the vase-maker didn't come out. Which is too bad, because when Mandy was taking the picture, he said "I speak English only for you." :)
The American Pavillion was pretty cool, even if it was a bit corny.
Anyway, go look at my pictures!
http://www.another2am.com/japanphotos/thumbnails.php?album=25
And for famiglia and friends, you can see my little videos I took on my camera of different things there. There's some livemusic and dancing fromt he Irish Pavillions, there's a cool giant clock (that we happened to see at noon when it was performing... unfortunately I had a moment of stupid and turned the camera sideways to take the video the long way, forgetting it doesn't do that. Duh), and then some videos of different exhibits at the UK pavillion. There's one where you move the flower and it makes little light bees go after it... and then another where you flip the pages of a virtual book, another where you use this cool wind-sensitive cloth.... and one more wher yeou make a virtual geckoman climb.
They're in this folder.
http://www.another2am.com/japan/bideo/
It's passworded because, well, I don't really want to share with people I don't know. The username is expo and the password is the color of my old van.
Aimee, great pictures!! Looks like lots to see and do there -- thanks for posting! Hope you are having a good time.
Posted by: Judy at July 16, 2005 01:47 AM