After a late start and some hesistation, I headed to
EXPO 2005, Aichi Japan. The site is about 30 minutes from my hotel by subway. Subways in Japan are great, after visiting New York, D.C., and living in Philly, I truly appreciate mass transit. Unfortunately, I also appreciate my space, having a couple of dogs, and working on my car. With that said, I'm not a big city person. Living in Philly caused me to have bouts where I needed to get out of the suburban sprall and into to some thick forests. An urge that doesn't come so often now that I have a couple of acres to wander.
OK, so EXPO. I'll post pictures but I will say that I was somewhat underwhelmed. Encountering a thick downpour sans umbrella may have had something to do with that ( the weather called for a sunny day). Buying an umbrella and having the wind snarl it may be another contributing factor, or maybe it was the throngs of school kids, or the long, long lines. Every pavillion with anything interesting had an hour or longer wait. I'll be fair, if you plan a month or two ahead of time and have a couple of days and manage to set a schedule for visiting every attraction....well, then you can use your advance ticket to reserve a spot and bypass the lines. I found out yesterday I'd have today free.
First up was the Mitsubishi Pavillion, "What if the moon never existed". The theme of EXPO is environmental awareness or "Nature's Wisdom". The pavillion included a couple of robots talking about things in Japanese ( I'm not quite there yet) and a movie. The english version, via headset was narrated by
George Takei or someone who sounded like him.
After that I went and visited the robot village, where I thought they may have those cool walking, talking, music playing robots. Nope, it was a kids activity area. I did meet a childcare robot that reacted to touch but not much more, I won't knock it though; it was neat. There was a tour guide robot a housecleaning robot and a security robot who looked like it might reveal a compartment with a chain-gun or missiles, not sure which.
Marching forward, I found the asian pavilion, the Thai contigent had a non-english version of "What's going on" playing on loop, I hope Linda Perry gets a cut of that. Then I tried to go to the Japan pavillion ( 2 hour line)...so, lunch instead (udong (sp) noodles if you're wondering). What else did I see, Libya was giving out free posters, Cuba had pictures of Che, Belgium was the only European country with a beer garden ( I drank a $9 Hoegaarden). Germany had the longest line of any country other than Japan, so I skipped it, hoping to head there (Germany not the EXPO) next month, Uzbekistan had hops, Turkey had the best looking guides, the Nordic countries had the best exhibits (they detailed the lives of everyday citizens with personal effects on display), China looked like they were going to close up shop any moment (
no wonder), the French were talking passing the point of peak oil consumption...the world is in a conflicted state..and the U.S. is not helping.
Out of the entire experience, I took away that it isn't just media bias, the world is seriously annoyed with the U.S. Case in point the U.S. pavillion First, the pavillion was empty--relatively. Every other country there had hired native speakers to guide the locals into the pavillion.....except the U.S. Oh my god I thought, this is going to be a trainwreck, the only thing that could make this worse is a security checkpoint...I spoke too soon..a security checkpoing awaited.. I succumed to the urge and took a picture. The poor guide, who btw made a valiant attempt to speak some first year Japanese (I'm not even at that level but I can recognize mistakes...and so could the Japanese crowd)...anyway, as I'm snapping my pictures the guide says "welcome to the US, huh?". Yeah,
NO other venue aside from the main entrance had any security checkpoint...only the US. Standing in line, our non-Japanese speaking ambassador greets the line on a display...in english..followed by the president. Who somehow managed to turn a talk about Ben Franklin (the subject of the exhibit) into a discussion about "spreading freedom" and moral values...well not directly, maybe I'm just cynical..oh no, wait, I know I'm cynical, but I could smell the spin a mile away. Perhaps GW has been spinning so long he doesn't know how to talk normally.
Whew, that's over, certainly they're not going to turn old BF (see quote at top of the page) into a political tool. After security we head into a lobby and wait to get into a movie deal thing. Where we are greeted quite literally with shock and awe. Simulated lightning and thunder courtesy of rattling benches, which, considering I was sitting next to a bunch of giggling schoolgirls seemed almost obscene. The show also sparyed the crowd with a little water at one point that annoyed more than it entertained. I couldn't help but think of it as a metaphor for America pissing all over the world. From the audiences reaction, I don't think the Japanese crowd appreciated that level of interaction.
On that note, it was around this time I started realizing that, oh dear, Ben Franklin had become a propaganda tool. Ben's little story had some plot holes I won't go into here, but it was when he started talking about ( and I'm paraphrasing) "spreading freedom" that my spin detector went off. The thesis of the presentation seemed to be something like, "the principles that I (BF) brought to the world in the Declaration of Independence allowed for an explosion of ideas that gave us flight, a man on the moon, etc. as these principles (stated in the DoI) spread across the world they will bring a new innovations and all will be well". The atom bomb was not mentioned.
Now, even though I'm an engineer I'm familiar with Derrida. So, using deconstruction, from a Japanese historical perspective, I heard something along the lines of: "Japan is where it is today because we dropped a big bomb on your asses and brought you freedom....much like we're doing in Iraq". I'm not sure how this translates into Japanese, but I felt a tad uncomfortable sitting there next to the school girls who had just be pissed and thrashed around by the resurrected Ben Franklin hoping that somehow he didn't give the whole crowd a venerial disease.
Franklin went on to extol the virtue of renewable resources, and how nature informs technology, and vibrated the crowd some more while explaining the only cool thing at the US pavillion: an operating fuel cell, they eveb showed the water byproduct. Finally, they insisted that everyone take a large brochure, I mention the brochure because it is large, by far the largest format brochure offered by any nation at the EXPO. You can read into that whatever you want.
Now I love my country, and I think it's the greatest country on Earth, but I have to say I was embarrased. Between not having a guide that speaks the local language and telling the rest of the world to shut up and be thankful for all we've done for them....I suppose the exhibit was truly reflective of the state of affairs between the U.S. and the rest of the world, I just think I was hoping, along with the rest of the world, that we'd show ourselves to be a bit more reasonable.
That really gets to the core of the matter. Bear with me here, apparently, I look American. I say this because no matter how much I tried to speak Japanese, guides would answer in english, would direct me in English. I'm of Dutch heritage and the Dutch people talked to me in Engligh. So, using EXPO 2005 as a guide, the rest of the world is severely annoyed with the U.S. but they're looking for hope that America will pull up to the bar with the rest of the world and drink up a dose of responsibility. Unfortunately, the message we're sending is we have our heads up our asses and if you're not like the U.S. you're not going anywhere.
....right, so the rest of the night was dull, I finally got into the Japan pavillion, but never got to see any of the cool stuff at the Toyota and Hitatchi pavillions (previously mentioned dancing, musical robots). At 7:30 the lines were long enough you could no longer get into the exhibits, which close at 10PM. The train back was packed like a sardine can and now I've packed and I'll be heading home to the U.S. to sit in another security checkpoint line for an hour or so after my 13 hour flight.
