World's Fair

After our great time at Mt. Koya, we got back on the Shinkansen and headed towards Nagoya where the World's Fair was held. We read about the World's Fair being in Japan before we left, and thought it sounded interesting.

We heard the crowds were really bad on the weekend, so we decided to plan it for during the week.

We hopped on a local train after getting off the bullet train in Nagoya, and started the long trip to the fair grounds which is in the country.

We met a couple on the local train. He was from Ohio, and was in Japan to study Japanese. His girlfriend was Japanese and didn't know much English. They helped to pass the time on the way to the Fair.

When we arrived at the Fair, we went our separate ways since we wanted to see different things. The crowds didn't look too bad from the gates, but there were plenty of people already inside. We didn't know what we were in for!

At the gate, I did see something I remember reading about in Wired, which was a robotic information guide. She would answer questions that you asked and gave you info. There was a line for this, but we could see it from between people so we moved on.


So, they couldn't get anyone alive to wear that uniform, huh?
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We decided to wander around and get our bearings before seeing an exhibit (perhaps our biggest mistake). You're supposed to wait in a long line to get a ticket for a certain time where you wait in an equally long line to see the shows.

These were the longest lines Ann and I have ever seen! Here are some pictures of the fairgrounds, followed by some pictures of the lines (Japanese will wait in line for HOURS if they want to see something.


Hitachi: Inspire the Next (is there a word missing here, or what's the deal?) Cool building witha waterfall cutting into it.
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Part of the center of the fair grounds
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They had exhibits for each country that was contributing. Didn't see any of these, lines too long.
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Global House in the middle of the fairgrounds, supposed to be cool exhibit. Longer than a 2 hour wait in the line to get tickets. (Is that an Asahi sign across the way? Let's go get a beer).
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Walls of Greenery. This was cool, it's a way to grow grass and plants on walls. Great for greening up the urban plight (and supposed to help suck up some CO2.)
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This is the line for Global House tickets (see the building in the distance? That's where they give out tickets.)
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Wow, that's a long line winding around. Let's go see if we can find a shorter line...
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Here's one of the few shows that had a short line! Great, we don't have to wait half the day to see one show!! wait.....that line is looking better and better...(notice all the adults watching this show without a kid to be seen). The show consisted of the two dancing adults in weird costumes and the slightly moving robots in the background.
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We were dissapointed by the World's Fair, which was definitely the low-light of our trip.

I think if we knew the procedure for seeing the big shows it would have been better. Oh well, back to Tokyo...