After visiting Alice’s family in Tokyo, we flew to Osaka and stayed in a hotel near the EXPO 2025 site.
Tickets
Waiting in long lines has always been a problem at World’s Fairs. I should know, I’ve been to 7 other World’s Fairs:
- 1964: New York (New York)
- 1982: Knoxville (Tennessee)
- 1984: New Orleans (Louisiana)
- 1986: Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada)
- 1992: Seville (Spain)
- 2010: Shanghai (China)
- 2022: Dubai (UAE)
The organizing committee for Expo 2025 in Osaka attempted to eliminate these long lines with a lottery system. It was a noble gesture but a total disaster. The instructions were, of course, entirely in Japanese. The website was unfathomable, even when we found English translations. And, it was excruciatingly slow and crash-prone.
All of the YouTube videos that I watched from early visitors complained about the lottery system.
We purchased our tickets when they first became available, six months before Opening Day.
Friday
One of the few reservations we were able to get was for the Australia Pavilion on Friday. We had 9 am tickets to enter via the West Gate and 9:30 am tickets for the Australia Pavilion.
When we arrived at our hotel on Thursday, we discovered that the shuttle bus only went to the East Gate. Our reservation was for the West Gate. I changed it to East Gate, but only 11 am was available. I tried to change it back, but only 11 am was available for West Gate.
Goodbye reservation! We had to skip the Australia Pavilion.
The only other reservation we were able to get for Friday was the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. This was special for me, since I volunteer with the American Red Cross. It was interesting to see what the international group did.
Many countries and organizations couldn’t afford to have their own pavilion. They opted to display inside the common buildings. We spent the rest of Friday visiting Common C.
That evening, we went looking for a place for supper. We found “Yakiniku Buffet”. They seated us at a table that had an embedded gas grill and lit it for us. They didn’t offer us a menu. Since neither of us speaks more than a dozen words in Japanese and no one there spoke English, we had to guess what to do next. Looking around the restaurant, we observed a buffet with raw meat and vegetables. Another guest was cooking meat on his grill. We decided to do the same. I’m not sure what we ate, but neither of us got sick after eating it. We decided it was just another “adventure”.
Saturday
On Saturday, Alice was suffering from knee pain and decided to stay at our hotel. I went to EXPO by myself.
In the evening we were joined by Alice’s son, daugher-in-law and grandson, who took the Shinkansen (“bullet train”) down from Tokyo. The five of us went to a Vietnamese buffet and celebrated her son’s birthday.
After dinner, we retired to our hotel room and the five of us played Farkle. Alice’s daughter-in-law was behind in points but then surprised everyone with some high scoring rolls and won the game!
Sunday
The next morning, we had entrance tickets for different gates. The three of them went to the West Gate, and the two of us went to the East Gate. We didn’t have any common reservations, so they went to their pavilions while we went to ours.
I had hoped to spend the day visiting pavilions with them. It was not to be. We did meet up occasionally. Neither Alice nor I had working phones, but we could text. For example, we sent the photo of a “You Are Here” sign so that they could find us.
On Sunday afternoon, we said goodbye to Alice’s family as they left for the subway to take the bullet train home.
Monday
On Monday, Alice had knee pain. She stayed at the hotel and did laundry.
I went to EXPO one last time. The only reservation I had that day was a pavilion called “PASONA NATUREVERSE.” It wasn’t on the map. There were no signs for it. I asked around and discovered it was in the “West Gate Zone”.
I walked toward the West Gate and asked at each pavilion. The attendants repeatedly told me that their pavilion was not PASONA NATUREVERSE. They didn’t know exactly where it was.
Finally, I learned that the building was called “E05”, which was on my map. Sure enough, there was a pavilion labeled E05, and they let me in. I never found a sign reading “PASONA” or “NATUREVERSE”. It’s possible that there was a sign in Japanese, but certainly nothing using the Roman alphabet.
It was the only pavilion that I got into all day!
This was my eighth EXPO, and by far the worst for seeing pavilions. Their attempt at a reservation system was worse than simply waiting in lines.