Back in 1988 my family drove down to Brisbane to spend a few days at Expo ’88. It was an incredible experience full of light and colour and amazing displays. Fast forward to 2010 and we found ourselves in Shanghai at Expo 2010. It didn’t quite have the same impact, but was still an experience.
When we realised that we were travelling to Osaka during Expo 2025 there was no choice really but to buy tickets. I entered the pavilion lotteries, got Japan and Australia. The website is a frustrating experience with a very poor user experience.
We catch the train from Honmachi Station, our closest, direct to Yumeshima near the East Gate of the Expo. The staff at Honmachi direct us through without using the ticket gates, which proves to be a problem at Yumeshima, where we have to get other staff to assist us in putting the trip on our IC cards.
Once we emerge from the underground station it’s out with the umbrellas. The grey skies are bucketing down and there’s no way we can stop from getting wet as we join the long, but swiftly moving queue.
I have printed out the tickets with the QR codes in addition to displaying it on my phone, which is a pain because the authentication keeps timing out.
The gates themselves are sheltered and there are bag checks, with our drink bottles scanned separately. But once we step out the rain magically stops.
I buy a map for 200 yen and we set about trying to work out how to get around the site. The correct way is basically to use the Ring, the world’s largest wooden structure. Running around the site, the Grand Ring provides shelter below and views on top. Right now that option is closed due to potential thunderstorms in the area.
Our first pavilion is Malaysia, B’s home country. With plastic models of Malaysian food, it starts well, but quickly degenerates into aspirational nonsense about intelligent cities when Malaysia needs to get the basics right first. Even their interactive games are too laggy to be fun.
We have a reservation for Australia, our home next. We enter into a forest of artificial gum trees with screens showing koalas and First Nations art work. Next is a multiscreen installation taking us through the rainforest and reef, with some animals drawn in Indigenous outline style. There’s no overt message,.just the beauty of Australia. We like it.
Opposite the Australian pavilion is one that appears covered in red kimono fabric and has only a short queue. It is the Iida Group and Osaka Metropolitan University and inside is their vision of artificial photosynthesis, the future of housing and a future city.
The centrepiece of the pavilion is a giant model of a future city. Twin rings overshadow the flat oval town. This is where the photosynthesis and food growth takes place, rather in the landscape below. Residents live either in two wooden high rise towers or in the sprawling housing below. There are hotels, a medical zone and various facilities, while a (working) high speed train runs in a ring around the town.
It is an impractical design that, for some reason, places artificial photosynthesis and hydrogen generation over the more efficient direct photoelectric production and places the car as the main mode of transport.
It still looks impressive!
Adjacent to the Iida pavilion is the ORA Gaishoku pavilion showcasing some regional Japanese food and where you can learn to make udon. An attendant at the Okayama stall got excited when she saw my Yakumo Express cap and that we’d just come from the city.
No advance reservation was required for the Indonesian pavilion. One of the queue attendants seemed to be having the time of her life singing guests into the line. In contrast to neighbouring Malaysia, Indonesia’s pavilion was a beautiful celebration of their culture, from a rainforest of orchids and pitcher plants to photographs of its people, ceremonial weapons from each of its states and video of a shadow puppet play. I really enjoyed it.
I wanted to go back and eat lunch at the Malaysian pavilion, but Alex and B had sashimi and gyoza at the paper float decorated West Ringside Marketplace. I just had a commemorative cream puff decorated a bit like the expo mascot Myaku-Myaku.
Azerbaijan’s nearby pavilion looked impressive from the outside, a lattice pattern on the exterior and statues of seven “beauties” twirling in the alcoves. But the interior was a disappointment, a poorly produced promotional video projected on hanging thin slats. Not worth visiting at all.
Opposite, the Earth at Night pavilion was simply a huge polished black lacquer sphere with gold patterns showing the lights of the cities of Earth at night. But the videos of the production process were interesting and there was no queue.
We now had to make our way around the ring to our pre-reserved slot in the host nation, Japan’s pavilion. The wooden slats of this ring shaped pavilion were scented with cedar. It demonstrated the process of converting organic waste from the expo into biogas and energy and the use of algae to produce food and material. It also has Hello Kitty as different types of algae, meteors from Mars and comet dust from the Hayabusa sample return missions.
Japan’s pavilion is interesting, educational and a work of art.
Nearby, the United Arab Emirates pavilion has a forest of palm clad pillars and no queues. It is a surprisingly beautiful and relaxed interior showcasing some of their technology developments, but it is the pavilion itself which is worth a visit.
Turkmenistan has to win the award for the most over the top pavilion, embracing a dictatorial ethos straight out of a Sacha Baron Cohen movie. Curved screens displaying colourful patterns and videos cover its rounded exterior, while inside you are welcomed to Turkmenistan by a portrait of its current great leader, Serdar Berdimuhamedow, son of the previous great leader Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.
The promotional video has computer graphics that would look comfortably at home in early 90’s cheap corporate videos, a standard American accented narraiton and praises the great leader’s wisdom more than once. Unlike the other petrostates’ pavilions that we visited, it also misses the point about sustainability, praising Turkmenistan’s oil resources.
The upper level displays a very random collection of Turkmen artefacts, including model vehicles, flasks of petrochemicals, a Guinness World Record for the longest single line bicycle parade by the Government of Turkmenistan and a huge number of books supposedly written by the great leader and his father.
It’s going to be hard to top all of that, so we don’t try.
Instead we poke our heads into the International Organisation Pavilion, which includes a display about ITER, the international fusion energy collaboration, and ASEAN. More stamps for the unofficial notebook I happened to have in my bag.
Many others, such as the fascinating, vibrating silver Null pavilion require reservations or have long queues.
Unlike in 2010, China’s pavilion does not require a reservation for entry and has short queues. The transparent touch screen displays allowing you to get details of the display case contents are very cool and there are many other videos about various Chinese environmental and engineering initiatives. However, we are in a bit of a rush because we want to get up to the Ring to see the sunset.
The Grand Ring is about 2 kilometres in circumference and stands up to 20 metres high. From the top there are spectacular views across the bay across to Nishi-Akashi Bridge and Kansai International Airport. Unfortunately, the clouds make the famous sunset view a bit of a fizzer, but it is still a pretty scene.
We decide to circumnavigate the ring, giving us an overview of the pavilions inside and out. Korea’s pavilion is one we wanted to enter. I swear that the pictures on it’s huge screen out the front are AI generated, based on the soft shapes and tearing visible in them, and yes, the sign says they are.
We pass Australia and can still hear the attendants singing outside of Indonesia. Singapore’s pavilion is a giant red ball.
Then we stop. The light show is about to start. Unfortunately, the drone show is cancelled due to the weather, but there are lights projected on to fountains in the water plaza. We can’t see the full picture from our angle, but as we continue walking there are other perspectives. As we come behind the water plaza, flames emerge from the water. I suspect the show would be even better from the front at ground level.
It is late by the time we complete our circumnavigation and decide to head back. It’s sad that we have missed so many of the pavilions and I never got my Malaysian dinner, but we are truly exhausted. We join the crowd in returning to Yumeshima Station and the packed train to Honmachi.
We walk back along Mido-Suji, the trees lining the thoroughfare lit up in blues and purples with fairy lights. An art gallery has scenes projected on to its wide stairway. B wants to go to a ramen restaurant opposite the hotel, but despite the late hour, there is a long queue outside. The waiting time is apparently three hours.
It turns out that it’s a tiny manga themed restaurant that is very popular with the social media set. I think we would have been too uncool to join that line.
So it’s convenience store ramen and bento for our dinner.
I’m glad we visited the Osaka Expo. It is a celebration of the world and its people, but also of art and design. My main regret was not spending more days there, because there were so many pavilions that we wanted to see, but couldn’t. It’s tempting to return. If only we had more time…