BACK ON THE TRAIN
Hey again. Back on the train again, this time from Nagoya back to Tokyo & Narita. We finished the Expo yesterday, though “finished” is a pretty loose term because we could have spent a week or two more there.
Yesterday was a crazy early day – we got on our first train at 6 a.m. – because we wanted to catch some of the big “corporate pavilion” rides. Monday, we had tried to get on the Hitachi ride, which they told us had the longest lines, but when we got through security 20 minutes after the expo opened, there was already a 4 hour wait for it. So we tried again on Tuesday, and we did it. You can see from some of the pictures I posted that we were a bit tired though. By the end of the day I was pretty out of it.
It also started pouring down rain shortly after we got there, both Monday and Tuesday. The rain ended by mid-day and it got kind of sunny and muggy. Before Tuesday’s trip, we checked yahoo weather and it said there was only a 30% chance of rain, and so I didn’t bother bringing the umbrella. Christian brought his, though, so we shared the one as we flew around the park trying to get our passes for the various corporate pavilion. At one point we were squeezed in a massive crowd of thousands of people all rushing toward one of the pavilions, all with umbrellas raised, though you’d be surprised how much rain managed to get through and land on us. It was also a little scary because there was no way to see any signs pointing where we were going, or really to control the movement of the horde. Actually, it was one of my favorite moments.
The pavilions at the expo were a mixed bag but some really stood out. The Singapore pavilion was a cool multimedia thing where in the middle it starts pouring down rain (you can see in the pictures, we were standing with umbrellas). Canada had a cool multimedia presentation, again with the new-age music. The US pavilion was hosted by Ben Franklin reincarnated, and he basically just talked about all the exciting innovations that Americans had developed over the years. I felt a little ill hearing him trumpeting the US’s environmental record, though, or space flights that took place 30 plus years ago. Australia had a nice simple display of a bunch of columns showing various video images. Korea was extremely colorful.
Japan had several pavilions, being the host country; the best part was a big room where you stood in the center of a sphere – sort of like the Cerebro computer from the X-Men movie, or that room in the Incredibles where all the black goo was thrown at our hero. Anyway, we were standing on a glass floor in the middle of the sphere, and the entire room showed images above world landmarks, from underwater, or in space, and it felt like we were flying through them. Extremely cool. Japan also had an enormous kaleidoscope that was beautiful; took a bunch of pics of that. Makes your neck tired though.
The Toyota pavilion showed some new personal movement devices (basically glorified neon wheelchairs) in a one-hour presentation worthy of cirque du soleil (lots of dancers, people falling from the ceiling, great music, etc.) And they had the brass band of ROBOTS at the beginning of the presentation. (Unfortunately, most of the corporate pavilions prohibited cameras.)
To get to and from the expo was a bit of a challenge; we rode the subway from our hotel to the main Nagoya train station, then took a train from Nagoya to Bampaku Yakusa, about a 38 minute ride to the east, and then took the “Linimo,” which is Japan’s first MAGLEV train, to the expo site. It floated above the track – pretty cool.
The linimo was just a local train, though – Japan is developing a superconducting maglev train for long distance travel at speeds of around 300 to 350 mph. We saw a 3-D video of the superconducting maglev at the Expo. It was very interesting for the first 10 seconds or so, looking at a train speed by. Then they showed another shot of the train speeding by. And another. And another. And look – here’s the train crossing a bridge. And look – here’s people sitting on the train. And here’s another shot of the train flying by. Get the idea? I’m fascinated by maglevs but wow that movie was underwhelming.
Ok, we’re getting near Tokyo now, so I’ll wrap this up. Once we drop our souvenirs back at the hotel, we’re going to tour a couple of Tokyo neighborhoods that have some shrines and interesting architecture. Tomorrow we have day one of Tokyo Disneyland. Talk to you then.
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