From here in Japan, the North Korean nuclear issue stands out due to geographic proximity. As a potential nuclear target, Japan presents Mr. Kim with plenty of US forces, and it lacks the problem of fallout from exploding a nuke just across his border at Seoul.

Fortuitously, a trigger for conflict is difficult to theorize in the near term. By the tally of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Mr. Kim holds Seoul hostage with “thousands of artillery systems—including multiple launch rocket systems that are particularly effective for CW (chemical weapons) delivery”. Thus a preemptive strike from Washington would involve the untenable sacrifice of over 10 million American allies.

North Korea, in turn, is unlikely to start something itself, as explained by Colin Powel just two weeks ago, “I am not concerned that North Korea will threaten or use their nuclear weapon. They’re not suicidal. They’re clever. The only thing they have is their nuclear weapons program. They will use it to get more in return.”

Really, what we have here is a despot bent on survival. As put by Dr. Masao Okonogi, professor at Koizumi’s alma mater Keio University, “If we accept that the North Korean regime’s aim is to ensure its own survival, unless that survival is guaranteed, and unless the North Korean regime believes that its survival is certain, ultimately North Korea is not going to abandon its nuclear program.”

The Western press has been providing nearly daily updates on the North Korean nuclear issue. But, when I went looking for the Japanese perspective, I found coverage here virtually ignores the nuclear issue in favor of focusing on North Korean abductions of Japanese civilians in the 70’s and 80’s.

The Crisis Group’s report recognizes the preeminence of the abduction issue, and does a great job of explaining it and the difficulties involved in resolving it. Commendably, the report does so without glossing over Japan’s contributions to preventing a resolution. Amongst other points, the report cites the criticism levied by the renowned scientific journal Nature, that the Japanese government is intentionally misrepresenting the results of forensic tests (”Politics Versus Reality”, March 17, 2005).

The effect of the preeminence of the abduction issue is succinctly noted in the report’s opening:

While the nuclear issue is the paramount concern of policy-makers and security experts, the abduction issue is the primary focus of the Japanese public. Consequently, the government will not have full freedom to negotiate on the nuclear issue until it can satisfy its public that the abduction problem has been resolved or at least will be resolved in parallel.

And, on the need for some movement on the Japanese side in the abduction issue:

…it is unclear whether North Korea can make a sufficient accounting of its past crimes to appease Japanese public opinion.

and

While North Korea’s track record of failing to abide by agreements justifies Japan’s unwillingness to take Pyongyang at its word, to show conclusively that it no longer holds any Japanese citizens against their will puts North Korea in the impossible situation of trying to prove a negative.

To read the western press, it would seem that the Japanese are not concerned with the abductions so much, but instead that they might be considering building nuclear weapons themselves. Personally, Japanese development of nuclear weapons strikes me as a waste, particularly considering the continued close cooperation of the US in defense of Japan. The report investigates this possibility and concludes:

While the Japanese government is deeply concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons, there is an overwhelming consensus in Japan that it would not pursue its own nuclear option, at least in the short to medium term.

The report takes a very practical view of what is possible for Japan to do in facilitating the resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue. Japan has a huge carrot for Mr. Kim in the form of normalized economic relations, but this carrot cannot be offered separate from a resolution of both the abduction issue and the nuclear issue.

There seem to be signs that Koizumi and Bush both already understand these points. The abductions issue has been broadly reformulated as a human rights issue, and added to Washington’s public list of demands for normalized relations with Pyongyang. What appears to be still missing is a clear, concrete roadmap for North Korea to make appeasements on the abductions issue, and importantly, this roadmap must be one that is possible for North Korea to execute on.

The report is available in both pdf and word format.

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

We continued around the expo, but never did get to the Japanese pavilion. We did see the Prince, and I caught this picture of him moving between pavilions in Europe. He seemed very comfortable in his role. For our own taste of VIP treatment, a friend working a the expo set us up with passes to skip the lines at the German and French pavilions.

The Germans built a mini ride inside their pavilion. The French had a completely incomprehensible pavilion. Part of the difficulty with the French was their decision to use French and Japanese instead of the more prevailing combo of English and Japanese. But, our group included people literate in both Japanese and French, and none of us grasped the concept of the French’s strange displays. Perhaps it was just modern art.

The Mongolian pavilion had a friendly character selling hand carved wooden puzzles. At Qatar there were Arab women in traditional dress doing hand painting for little girls. That activity was popular, with a line inside the pavilion.

One very cool pavilion, in an odd way, was Libya. We didn’t plan to go to Libya, but our intended path was blocked twice by security for the Japanese Crown Prince, and so as with many of our directional choices of the day, we went where it was easy to go. Libya had no line, and it even had comfortable chairs for a short rest. The displays weren’t impressive, but the guy running the pavilion was. He was promoting Libya as a tourism destination, and doing so in friendly, impeccable English. I never thought I’d meet anybody from Libya.

Perhaps that was the best part of the expo — the people working the pavilions. All of the pavilions we visited were staffed by people from those countries (with the exception of Japanese security at Qatar). They were all conversant in Japanese, many also in English, and they were all friendly. You could meet people from all over the world.

Before leaving Aichi Expo, we stopped to check out the host of the 2010 world’s fair, China. It is probably due to in part to the anti Japanese protests in China, but the China pavilion was almost empty. A brief glance at one display revealed a claim to have the world’s tallest building in Shanghai. Used to be true, and will be again eventually, but I’ve been in the world’s current tallest building, and it’s in Taipei. There were chairs in one room, but next to them were signs that said “Don’t Touch”. But, in the gift shop business was relatively brisk.

The Linimo was fully loaded at the time, and as readers may understand from my early notes on getting to the expo, the Linimo’s capacity is inadequate to the task of transporting expo goers, even without a breakdown.

After only a 10 minute stoppage, the Linimo was back in action. As for a cause, authorities are said to be investigating.

Today, the total number of visitors to Aichi Expo since its openning is expected to exceed 8 million. Daily attendance routinely exceeds 100 thousand, and in this country where trains are the primary form of transportation, the Linimo provides the only train access to the expo.

The Linimo experienced more serious delays on March 19th, six days before the scheduled opening of the expo. 53,000 invited guests came to see the expo grounds, and then, as now, the Linimo was the primary method of access. Load weight sensors mounted on the train’s undercarriage fired at lighter loads than expected, and as a result the doors wouldn’t close. The solution for that day was to let fewer passengers on board at one time.

Japanese language articles for those looking for more info:
The Yomimuri Shinbun on today’s malfunction
The Asahi Shinbun on March 19th’s weight sensor problem

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

Continuing our tour of Aichi Expo, we considered a stop at the Japanese pavilion. From the gourd shaped road looping the expo, you could look down on the Japanese pavilion. In fact, many people were doing just that. Maybe there were three or four hundred of them leaning up against the railing, watching the pavilion’s back entrance.

Lemming-like, I joined them, but noticed nothing interesting. Asking one of those already there revealed that Crown Prince Naruhito was expected to arrive soon.

I thought the Prince’s appearance might have contributed to the huge number of people who were attending the expo on a Monday. Checking the expo’s official site, I would later learn that my chosen Monday had seen 139,001 visitors. But for comparison, this weeks Monday had 129,835 visitors. I guess the expo was just getting more visitors than it was designed to handle, Prince or no Prince.

With the Prince about to visit the Japan pavilion, we bet on finding more tolerable lines at other countries, and went about seeing a bit of the Americas and Asia. We also fit in a detour down a forest path.

The forest path was a wonderful break from the crowds. There was barely anyone on it. There were several art displays along the path, some of which were so small or subtle as to be easily missed if you were walking too quickly. There were colorful mushroom sculptures, rocks painted like hamsters, all the way up to small fields of ping-pong ball like, man-made flowers.

The ball flowers weren’t really ping-pong balls, but were made of some fibrous, absorbent material. The balls sat atop thin stalks that were flexible enough to let the balls sway in the wind. A sign explained that when it rained, the balls would absorb water, become heavy, and bend their stalks down like drooping flowers.

The forest path brought us close to the Americas, where I was curious to see what my own country had put together for the expo. The US erected mere tents for the 1992 world’s fair in Seville. It had been a complete no-show at Hannover in 2000, after congress prohibited funding for participation in world’s fairs. Check out Fred Bernstein’s article on how the US is reentering the world’s fair scene. The short answer is sponsors.

Also worth a look is the official US pavilion site. Click over to the sponsors page, and you will find a few surprises. American corporations certainly contributed a lot, but many Japanese companies also helped us get there, as well as non-profit organizations. The Audubon Society was a big donor. Even the Chunichi Dragons, Nagoya’s baseball team, was a donor.

The US pavilion was a three room affair. The first two showed movies with an extra trick or two. You got a brief biography of Benjamin Franklin, and then Franklin time traveled to the present and shared his observations on present day society. Ok, maybe his observations were portrayed as a little more upbeat than my own, but he did deliver a straightforward endorsement of alternate energy sources. The third room showed off a few history making tech achievements and a couple new inventions. They even had a couple pavilion workers zipping around on Segways. On the whole, I was pretty happy with the pavilion.

To be continued.

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.

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.

Aichi Expo is a world’s fair with an environmental theme. It is being held this summer, just outside Nagoya.

I had been debating whether or not to go, which seems a crime being already in Japan. But it was reported crowded, and Nagoya’s hotels were booked solid. I ended up going, and staying outside Nagoya. In fact I was outside Aichi altogether, bracketing my day with nights in Tokyo and Kyoto.

Fate lined up a Monday for my trip, and I was happy as it wasn’t a weekend. I caught a 6:05am Shinkansen out of Tokyo, and arrived in Nagoya in time to catch the 8:02 train to the expo. Or I guess I should call that the 8:02 “train to the train to the expo”. Surprisingly, there was no direct train service between Nagoya Station and the expo.

A brand new train, called the Linimo, was built to take people to the expo, but the new Linimo only ran to small suburban stations. I think the Linimo should have been run all the way to Nagoya Station, to meet up with the Shinkansen, the backbone of Japan’s rail network. Either that, or the Linimo should have been skipped in favor of extending an existing line to the Expo.

We aren’t talking about a prefecture that was resistant to expansion of the transportation system in general. Aichi built a whole new international airport in time for the Expo. The train from the airport, of course, ran to Nagoya Station.

So I was stuck with an unnecessary transfer. It turned out to be a maddeningly overcrowded one. I have spent a lot of time on Tokyo’s famously overcrowded subways, and have made many forays across its busiest train station, Shinjuku. The crowd at this transfer was worse than either. A massive press of humanity in which it was a challenge to merely stick together with my few companions — it was almost as bad as the crush at Aichi’s Konomiya Shrine during the Naked Festival. Incidentally, video footage of the Konomiya Naked Festival was reported to be on display at the expo’s Electric Power Pavilion.

There were a lot of people, and like me, most of them were probably upset to discover they weren’t getting to the expo early after all. We were eventually squeezed onto the Linimo, and later released to the expo gates, only to find more long lines for the security check at the entrance. Waiting in the security line took long enough that by the time my group was actually in the expo, it was already 9:45. Between the transfer and the security check, we had lost more than an hour. Failing to show earlier would turn out to cost us any practical opportunity to see our first choice of pavilions, but I’ll leave that, and the story of what we did see for part 2.

For today’s dose of hindsight, I wish I had started my day closer to Nagoya. There were rooms available in Kyoto, and the first Shinkansen from Kyoto rolled into Nagoya roughly an hour before the first one from Tokyo. The expo was clearly the early bird’s worm.

This story continues with part 2.