Misa Edito:
Ahhh…our first
EXPO (万博). We anticipated the hour(s) long wait within the EXPO, but forgot to factor in the serpentine-ing line for the subway!!! So many people, that early in the morning and on a weekday…needless to say… it was only the beginning! After waiting for an hour, under the beating sun outside the gate, (inadvertently, though gratefully, getting shelter from the careful Japanese women with their mandatory parasols), we finally made it inside… not really prepared for what was to come. Just behind the gate is Corporate Pavilion B (the big guns, with lines and waits proportional to profit margins!). Because we didn’t make it to the gates early enough and didn’t yet know we had to literally run once inside to get reservations, we were forced to bypass the Corporate pavilions and took a fuel cell bus to the farther Seto Area. Within the AICHI PAVILION the ties between man/technology and nature were demonstrated via art, architecture and imagination. We then went to the section for Asia: Nepal was more like a market of Nepalese goods (beautiful and expensive); Korea showed how nature influenced and immersed itself in their expressions of their culture (the coolest thing was the tree-shadow. In the video clips- a person stands before a screen, and his/her shadow creates the tree-trunk, from which random branches sprout; China’s demonstrated culture through performance. Then it was on to the North American Area. Canada did a good job of combining Canadian people, icons, nature and technology. America, on the other hand, did little more than pat itself on the back, and tout it’s major technological advancement of “man on the moon.” After seeing what the other countries offered as their interpretation of man/technology and nature… I was very disappointed in the American Pavilion. It was then on to South America, a brief stop in Saudi Arabia, a snip-it of a night performance, fairies on the lawn, and calling it a day with a 1.5 hour wait to get in to see the new single unit, fluid mobility of Toyota. From opening to close… we made it though. We may not have accomplished all we had hoped for the day, but we were better prepared to be tougher and faster in the days to come…
