Pink suits and wild hair, a cappella

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

Walking from the Australia pavilion to explore its neighbors at the Aichi expo, we spotted three men in tight pink suits with hair that looked like it was trying to phone home. They broke into song, a cappella, and approached one of the women in our group. Of all of the expo visitors in sight, she was the only non-Asian woman, and she probably stood out as most likely to survive their attentions. The lead sang about how beautiful she was and how much in love he was. It was a riot, and a welcome one at that.

After this much needed laugh we explored a couple more pavilions in the South East Asia and Oceania cluster. Most were smaller buildings with no lines. The model, which was to repeat itself for the majority of country pavilions, was something of a mini museum and gift shop. The large majority of the displays had information written in both Japanese and English.

The Thai pavilion hit me as an anachronism. The main message there was how the greatest gift of the Thai people was the wisdom of their king.

However, there was Thai food for sale, which sounded very tasty to me. Most of our group chose the phad thai. I should have, as it was better than the chicken and basil dish I chose. Disappointingly, the food seemed to be on par with McDonalds. Later research turned up the tidbit that the food had been supplied by an airline, which explained things. Still, it was certainly good enough.

Surprisingly for an environmentally themed expo, our food was served on disposable plastic trays with plastic lids. When we finished eating there wasn’t a trash can within sight. In Japan trash cans can be found in train stations and convenience stores, and that’s about it. But, we also didn’t see any trash lying around, so there had to be a reasonable solution.

With my encouragement one of us had already handed his trash back over the counter, and then we spotted an expo worker pushing a trash can. I kept an eye out for trash cans as we continued around the expo, and they were clumped in a few, rare places. I never did notice a clump within 100 yards of anyplace food was sold.

We were happy to have eaten without having had to stand in a long line, and we continued on to check out other short-lined country pavilions.

This story continues with part 4.