Sunday, August 14, 2005
World EXPO
A parade through the streets of the World EXPO.
We went to the World EXPO in Nagoya for a day. Tickets are expensive, but they were well worth it. When we arrived we spent some time in Eastern Europe, then traveled to Scandanavia and a scattering of European countries. I would definitely say that Denmark, Sweden and Norway had the best exposition. It was well displayed and there wasn’t any waiting like in some countries. You could go through the expo at your own speed unlike Poland or Portugal that had long speeches or videos that you had to wait through even if you weren’t interested (or couldn’t understand).
After a particularly long video in Poland we were drawn to Africa’s music. Joelle and Steven thought beers would help them through those rough expos.
Dancing to African music was so much fun! We won’t mention when it started to rain and decided to move the benched to a covered area and we got in trouble by a security man. He was seriously uptight (and we were a little bit drunk!).
Double fisting it…
We ate lunch in SE Asia—because what better place to eat?—and then spent some time with the Robots before heading back to Nagoya for the night.
On the train home Steven—gasp, shock, horror—ran out of water! He had been so obsessive about filling his water bottle after every two sips that my repeating question for him was, “Why do you insist on carrying around liters upon liters of water?” Everyone here knows there are 2 vending machines per person in Japan, but there's something about Nalgene water that just doesn't compete with any other bottled water.
Maybe you had to be there…
A T-shirt I got at the EXPO. These little dudes are the EXPO mascots and are very popular in Japan right now.
We stopped hitch-hitching in Nagoya and decided to take the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Mt. Fuji. The Bullet Train is quite a fun experience, providing you give yourself plenty of time to get off…
We were a little bit late getting out of our seats for our stop and as we had to fight a crown off people coming down the narrow aisle. Finally we got to the end of the car and as I was stepping off the train I noticed the doors started to close on me. Joelle had already gotten off and Steven was right behind me, but the doors closed before he could get off. Steven was desperately pulling at the door to open it and get off, but to no avail. The door wasn’t opening and the train started going! Joe and I started laughing so hard as we waved to Steven as he peered out the window. The look on his face, I’ll never forget—absolute horror! He was off to Tokyo!!
After laughing so hard I almost peed my pants we decided we might think about doing something to help poor Steven. Joelle said if that had been her left on the train she’d be very nervous about getting back to us. We talked to a very kind information desk woman who got a message to his train and gave him my cell phone number. (Yeah! I hadn’t thought of giving them my cell number or putting my name, address, etc in their wallets!) He got on the next train back to Mishima and an hour later we hooked up. We had several more hours of traveling to get to Mt. Fuji our hotel, but thanks to the hotel agreeing to pick us up after hours, it all worked out.
I decided then to write my name, number and address in English and Japanese to put in Joelle’s purse. Then I wrote my number on her and Steven’s arms.
Pictures from Fuji-san next!
Love, Sierra
