Notes on Japan

This is a 5 part series. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out part 1.

Once inside we headed directly to the Hitachi and Toyota Pavilions, rumored to be the most interesting at the expo. The more popular pavilions had a time reservation system where you could go there to pick up a reservation ticket, and then return at the time of your reservation and stand in a shorter line. Hitachi and Toyota were next to each other, and not far from the entrance, so even with the delay getting to and into the expo we still arrived at the pavilions before 10:00am. But, all of the reservations for both pavilions were already passed out for the entire day.

As with the fasttrack system at Disneyland, you could still stand in line without a reservation, it was just a longer line. For Hitachi the wait time for this standby line was marked as 300 minutes. Toyota didn’t look any more promising.

The country pavilions were rumored to be a little boring, but along with boring came the prospect of short lines. We decided they couldn’t be as boring as a 5 hour line. We made off toward the center of the expo, where the Japan pavilion was marked by a tall, angular tower with water flowing down the sides.

A broad, elevated road ran a circle around the expo, and the pavilions were generally in clumps in or outside the circle. Or, I guess the loop road was more of a gourd shape than a circle. Japan had two large pavilions in the center of the gourd. One was the tower, 47 meters tall, which was the world’s largest kaleidoscope.

From the water flowing down the tower’s sides, one of our group guessed that the tower served as a low energy cooling system for the neighboring pavilion. The technique would have used the evaporating water on the tower walls to cool water running through pipes in the walls, which in turn could have been used to cool the second pavilion. But I haven’t found any reference to the tower having been a cooling system. Considering the environmental theme of the expo, it would be a pity if that opportunity was missed.

We started rounding the gourd to find a way down to its center. The first couple paths down were barricaded and guarded, apparently one way. The third path down wasn’t barricaded, and down we went. At the bottom we found the Australia pavilion, and were excited to find it had only a 15 minute line. Forgetting Japan for the moment, we queued up.

The main attraction of the Australia pavilion was a short animated movie. Some special projection technology might have been in use, as the picture looked unusual — mostly black, with bright neon colors. Also, there was no screen, per say, that I noticed.

There was a particular area of the viewing room marked out for English speakers to stand in and hear an English version of the sound track. We were warned that from the English box we might not get a good view of the show, but we were invited to watch it twice, the second time from up front, when we would have the benefit of having already heard the story. It sounded like a good idea, but in practice none of us were able to make out the English soundtrack, even standing in the English box.

Following the neon movie we were lead into a round white room with videos playing on several angular pillars in the middle of the room. The pillar projections seemed to almost knit together for a few scenery shots, which was neat, but the best part of the room was the padded bench that ran around the wall. We had only been to one pavilion so far, but getting there had been enough of an expedition that we were glad for the opportunity of a brief rest.

After the pillar projections was the gift store. Well actually, on the way to the gift store there was a giant model of a platypus, which served fairly well as a photo opportunity, “Look, I was at the Australia pavilion.” There was a feeling of, “oh, that’s all?” But, the gift store was cool. I bought a wide brimmed hat, something rather hard to find in Japan. There were beautiful opals on sale. For those inclined for a snack, it looked like you could buy crocodile at the food counter.

The country pavilions were arranged in clumps according to geographic region. Australia was in the area set aside for Oceania and South East Asia. We set about exploring Australia’s neighbors down under, but we had taken less than ten steps before we were set upon by three of the funniest looking characters at the expo.

This story continues with part 3.