venerdì 15 agosto 2025

Osaka Expo - Day 2 (23-07-2025)

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We have reserved entry at 11, but actually get in almost an hour later. First we visit a temple (you have to book a time slot for entry, but it’s just a minimum time and you can enter at any time after that). This time, we stop at the women's pavilion, despite the expected 45-minute wait (which ends up being a little less). It's absolutely worth it, as the pavilion is really well done. It presents three women from three different backgrounds: for rich countries, the Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto; for middle-income and poor countries, respectively, a Mexican and a Sudanese activist. Each visitor follows a path dedicated to one of these three individuals—I get Yoshimoto—then there’s a series of displays about the progress of women's rights.

It's lunchtime: we stop at the Canada restaurant to eat poutine (a Canadian dish made with potatoes). However, we can’t visit the pavilion, as it's only by reservation unless you’re Canadian. The first national pavilion we visit is that of the United Arab Emirates: very impressive, both for its architecture—based on date palm trunks—and for its content, which talks about the innovative projects they're involved in, especially on sustainability, and about their schools. The first thing that comes to mind when you think of the UAE, however, is never mentioned: by now, fossil fuels are more “unmentionable” than opium or cocaine. It’s also mentioned that they hosted the COP28 climate summit, but omitting that they were chosen precisely to involve oil-producing countries.



Next door is Qatar, but we don’t feel like queuing for a country similar to the one we’ve just seen. The line for Vietnam is much more manageable: an interesting pavilion, which talks about the country’s past and present, addressed to both tourists and investors. We then walk past the French and US pavilions, where the lines are truly prohibitive, and we take refuge in one of the few pavilions without a queue: Mozambique. Many stop there to rest. The pavilion is small and essential, focused on start-ups founded by local youth. Here we begin to notice a peculiarity of this Expo, which I hadn’t found at previous ones: almost all countries give a lot of prominence to their ties with the host country. Palau will even claim to have good memories of the Japanese occupation.



We skip Ireland, again because of the line, and head to Malaysia. Another very interesting pavilion, presenting all the regions of the country, with a large scale model of Kuala Lumpur, and focusing on study opportunities (it was the dedicated week). Then we visit the first “common” pavilion of the small states, some of which aren’t so small, like Kenya. There are also my old acquaintances Barbados and St. Lucia, which I visited on a cruise: the latter has a giant image of their greatest national heroine, Julian Alfred (the airport is even named after her). The story of North Macedonia is interesting, about the center of Skopje destroyed by an earthquake in 1963 and rebuilt by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.





We pass by Germany, which has closed the line. So we head to Thailand: a very large, well-made pavilion, but monothematic, focused on healthcare. It discusses the 20 hospitals authorized to treat foreigners and the fact that they’re among the top countries in the world for “health tourism”—a reality hard for us to imagine. It’s late, it’s dark, but right after comes Spain, a pavilion so big that it manages a huge flow of visitors without a queue. There’s a flamenco show, then a room with videos and a hallway with postcards, from the '60s to today, about all aspects of the country. The best of the day—the Spanish never disappoint.




We leave knowing that, after 2 days out of 3, we still haven’t even set foot in more than half the area. On the way out, we find a massive crowd: it takes us over half an hour to snake through the lines to reach the metro (no more than 200 meters as the crow flies). In the end, though, the crowds on the metro are nothing compared to rush hour in Rome.

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