Wolfed down breakfast at the hotel and took a series of trains and shuttle buses to get to the world expo.  Waited in the sunny parking lot for 45 minutes.  98 degree and no shade.  We had our umbrellas and fans going though.  

We got in and went to get more reservations and then went to the tomorrow pavilion.  It was a cute demonstration of what tomorrow could look like.  Reminded me of Epcot in tone.  They did have more puppetry and anime delivery though.  :)

Then we walked to the great wooden circle (largest wooden circle in the world now) and found the Australian pavilion which was great! You walked through a forest and spotted animals on screens and smelled eucalyptus.  Then we walked into a giant room of screens and you felt like you were transported to the shoreline or underwater.  A giant whale swam over our heads.   Very well done! We ate some lunch in Australia, too.

We then went to the Indonesian pavilion and it was very good too. A nice walk through a forest of real plants they brought with them for this pavilion. And then a movie or two as well.  One was about shadow puppets. 

We also went to some common areas and saw some countries like Cuba and Congo!

After, we went through an interior “forest” to find some shade and they had some good misters going so we hung out there.  Then it was time for our reserved table at the cafeteria.  We had some good sushi and coffee floats.  Even cafeteria food is good here!

We went into the Philippines pavilion which was very nice as well.  They had beautiful tapestries that they projected things onto like a guy surfing. 

They also had a visual display that would look like a mirror except replace you with a shrub in the shape of you.  Or fish. It was fun as we pretended to get the shrubs to fight each other. 

We stopped at a robotics exhibit which was neat how they could fit robots into a suitcase or climb a wall!

Then we found our favorite exhibit. The resting pavilion.  They had the Kon'nichiwa song playing non stop along with the mascot of the expo that looks like a melted nuclear mutant dancing around a hilltop at sunrise. It’s a catchy song, though.  Added to the playlist. 

We then went to an airplane exhibit sponsored by Japan Airlines.  They’ve been working on a done that we could sit in and take pictures!  Then we designed our own pattern and walked into a cube of a room with projections on all four walls and floor and a rumble effect on the floor. 

We saw our planes flying around with our designs and then we had the experience where they showed what it would be like to fly through the air with that drone. And quickly visit grandparents.  

Then Hilary got us into the Gundam pavilion, which is a big get. Hard to get into.  We saw a presentation in Japanese and figured out there was a space elevator we were going up in now that the war was over to help clean up space debris. The only problem was that one of the debris chunks was really a bad robot bend on destroying us, so our cute robot guides named “ex” and “po” (expo, get it?) called on the power of the gundam to save us and they battled all around different staged rooms.  Very great implementation.  I wasn’t into Gundam, but you could tell it’s very big here.  It was a lot of fun.  One thing we noticed was that there were sayings like “this is an emergency… please evacuate…” and “this is not a drill” in English.  That wouldn’t work in America Ben was telling me because that prevents true emergency messages from being believed.  Perhaps they have that here too but maybe that’s why all those messages were only in English? Not Japanese? 

It was getting cooler out so, We went on a walk around the outside ring of the event, a Guinness record building!  We walked along the top and saw the beautiful views of all the pavilions from a high elevation (4 stories about). And swallowed many bugs by accident.  As night fell we saw a drone show (could hear all the buzzing like a swarm of bees) we were really close to them.  It was pretty impressive. Saw a woman falling, a butterfly and a few abstract designs. It ended with them spelling out arrows to the exits.  Very neat application of drones!

We got stuffed into a bus, tended up taking a cab to Osaka train station to avoid the crowds, and stood on a train back to Kyoto.  It took us about 2 hours to get back to our hotel and I think we broke 20,000 steps today.  In all this heat that was an accomplishment.  

As soon as I could I passed out in bed.