Day 10 – Ring Around the Expo
April 24, Osaka
It was a super chill day start for us. We woke up naturally, took our time getting ready, I finished blogging and catching up on some work while Elijah made music and Julie started playing tears of the Kingdom. She went out to go get breakfast and snacks from the company downstairs while the rest of us was laying around. Finally, it was time to part ways. Julie would take a much needed rest day, while the three of us would go and explore the expo. Trains were uneventful but this time you be taking a different route. Elijah found a cool mural downstairs so we paused so he can take a picture of it… Good thing he did right across from it was the train we wanted to board.
They built a brand new train station specifically for the expo, So we were transferred right inside. There were so… Many… People. Like, I thought Disney had a lot of people last week. Nope. Nope. This was A SEA of people. Granted, it was because there was really only one point of entry – we knew it would thin out once we got through security.
And it did.
We'd never been to a World Fair before.
And we were all thoroughly tired, so we really just strolled. I believe 184 countries were represented here. The theme of the fair was “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”. This theme is further elaborated through three sub-themes: Saving Lives, Empowering Lives, and Connecting Lives. The first thing we ran into was a crazy hydroponics exhibit. Top level was the “pretty” flowers, next was vegetables, then herbs, then salt-thriving plants (think seaweed) then fish. The water would trickle down from top to bottom and the fish water would be recycled and cleaned by whatever species they had in there, to be reused by the top portion. All the plants and fish were edible. Super neat.
We walked through an art exhibit with two layers, one of color recycled cloth and the outer of old satchels. From far off, it looked like a solid color wall made of weird glass that waved in the wind, but once upon it, you could tell it was two separate walls.
One of the others ones we went to (robotics for the nerd child) had a suitcase designed for the blind that used lidar to navigate. So you could go into a subway and hold onto your suitcase and it would steer you in the correct direction, complete with built in Google maps. We saw an older gentleman testing it later in the day (which made Elijah SUPER jealous).
We went through several cool exhibits – a fossilized tree forest, a giant fog machine, a building made of some kind of strange material that bounced against music playing…a giant Gundam. It was all just overwhelming and neat.
We stopped to get lunch and I had my first proper Tonktatsu of the trip (one of my favorite Japanese dishes). After lunch we journeyed up to the Grand Ring. The plants up top were all in some kind of sustainable containers and the water used was the runoff from the grand ring and other buildings. It was great how creative the place was for sustainability. The ring itself is sustainable – constructed using modern construction methods and traditional timber joints used in the construction of Japanese shrines and temples…using cedar and Cyprus wood…with plans to be used for other things. The wood smelled AMAZING. Just walking around it was a treat for the senses. The day was warm again so with the nice sea breeze, soft smells of the wood, beauty of the flowers and warm sun…it was such a vibe to just walk around the ring.
We would be back tomorrow,
so we decided to call it an early day and head home. We dropped off the boy and headed back down into the subway into a underground shopping district called “Namba Walk” This walk was about half a mile in each direction, just filled with shops, restaurants and sundries. We found some treasures and after purchasing them, went back to get Elijah and traveled back to get burgers. It was nice to sit in a booth with windows facing the walk and have dinner under a subway station. Super surreal. The boy then got a backpack and I a shirt and we headed back up towards home to play video games, watch cartoons, work a little and just veg out the rest of the night.
