Aichi World Expo
Last weekend the 2005 Aichi World Expo closed after having sold 22 million tickets, most of them to Japanese nationals (only 4.5% of visitors were foreign). As neither of us had ever been to a World Expo, Vaughan and I thought we should go check it out and at the same time let it coincide with our first trip to Honshu (main island in Japan), quite exciting... Despite the heat, the thronging masses and the insanely long lines at certain pavilions we 
both loved it! I usually avoid amusement parks like the plague, but the expo site seemed like a huge global theme park, filled with a myriad of often stunning pavilions, heaps of exotic food, and people dressed in the most bizarre outfits (the ones in the 'Silk Route' pavilion especially!). Too bad they didn't have a hotel on the premises, I would have gladly roamed around the site for 3 or 4 days :-). Because of the 120 000 other people around and the immense heat we had to come up with an 
energy-conserving game plan, namely: don't even try to take a peek into the popular pavilions like Toyota, the one with the frozen mammoth, or any big countries, but instead focus on Asia (of less interest to many Japanese) and of course the wee little countries New Zealand and Belgium! In the end we managed to get into about 20 pavilions, ranging from Bhutan to Cuba, and both shed a quiet tear (Vaughan an invisible one!) when entering the realms of our own countries... Good to see that both governments made a real effort to come up with an innovative design and a look in line with the theme of the expo ('Nature's Wisdom'), at least we could walk with our heads held high! In typical Kiwi fashion Vaughan turned out to know one of the attendants at the NZ pavilion, 
two degrees of separation indeed! I wasn't so lucky as to bump into a familiar face, but the Belgian souvenir shop provided me with a few old -and very much missed- friends, chocolate and speculoos :-). Apparently I wasn't the only one digging into Belgian treats because at the end of the expo the Belgian pavilion had sold 45 000 liters of beer, 900 000 waffles, 100 000 ice creams, 20 tonnes of chocolate and 1,5 million speculoos biscuits. Waw, well done citizens of Japan, bring on the diabetes and cholesterolproblems!
Last weekend the 2005 Aichi World Expo closed after having sold 22 million tickets, most of them to Japanese nationals (only 4.5% of visitors were foreign). As neither of us had ever been to a World Expo, Vaughan and I thought we should go check it out and at the same time let it coincide with our first trip to Honshu (main island in Japan), quite exciting... Despite the heat, the thronging masses and the insanely long lines at certain pavilions we 
both loved it! I usually avoid amusement parks like the plague, but the expo site seemed like a huge global theme park, filled with a myriad of often stunning pavilions, heaps of exotic food, and people dressed in the most bizarre outfits (the ones in the 'Silk Route' pavilion especially!). Too bad they didn't have a hotel on the premises, I would have gladly roamed around the site for 3 or 4 days :-). Because of the 120 000 other people around and the immense heat we had to come up with an 
energy-conserving game plan, namely: don't even try to take a peek into the popular pavilions like Toyota, the one with the frozen mammoth, or any big countries, but instead focus on Asia (of less interest to many Japanese) and of course the wee little countries New Zealand and Belgium! In the end we managed to get into about 20 pavilions, ranging from Bhutan to Cuba, and both shed a quiet tear (Vaughan an invisible one!) when entering the realms of our own countries... Good to see that both governments made a real effort to come up with an innovative design and a look in line with the theme of the expo ('Nature's Wisdom'), at least we could walk with our heads held high! In typical Kiwi fashion Vaughan turned out to know one of the attendants at the NZ pavilion, 
two degrees of separation indeed! I wasn't so lucky as to bump into a familiar face, but the Belgian souvenir shop provided me with a few old -and very much missed- friends, chocolate and speculoos :-). Apparently I wasn't the only one digging into Belgian treats because at the end of the expo the Belgian pavilion had sold 45 000 liters of beer, 900 000 waffles, 100 000 ice creams, 20 tonnes of chocolate and 1,5 million speculoos biscuits. Waw, well done citizens of Japan, bring on the diabetes and cholesterolproblems!
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