2005 World Expo
The weekend featured a whirlwind tour of the 2005 World Expo, held this year in Aichi, Japan. I went with the Ikedas, the couple with whom I became acquainted while working the English Conversation circuit in the District.
pman5000 and Nichole profess to have fallen in love with event, but I was largely unimpressed. Still, the Ikedas proved my benefactor by providing me with a ticket, so I can't complain.
But I will offer a criticism. The theme of this year's Expo is Nature's Wisdom, yet the bulk of the corporate and country pavilions decided to placate and make comfortable its visitors. In, for instance, the Mitsubishi exhibit, we are treated to a video of the state of the world were we to not have our moon, and the 'Save the Earth' message randomly tagged on at the end. The JR exhibit, as well, failed to conceive of a pavilion that had even the most remote relation to the Expo's stated guiding principles. While its trains can levitate, the JR exhibit never rose above naked self-promotion.
The one exhibit I saw (and by no means did I see everything - the fabled Toyota and Hitachi pavilions each had lines of over six hours long) that truly forced one to consider one's place in the world, and further, how one should refine and minimize one's presence, was the French exhibit. First there was a fifteen minute short film shown on the walls and ceiling of a boxed room in which moving imagery and statistics blatantly revealed the inequities of social development and the reality of environmental destruction. Complementing this doom came several examples of attempts to reform the current environmental trends. It made the audience think. We're all hypocrites when it comes to our stated ideals and lived practices, but even just realizing that is an improvement from congratulatory back-patting.
pman5000 and Nichole profess to have fallen in love with event, but I was largely unimpressed. Still, the Ikedas proved my benefactor by providing me with a ticket, so I can't complain.
But I will offer a criticism. The theme of this year's Expo is Nature's Wisdom, yet the bulk of the corporate and country pavilions decided to placate and make comfortable its visitors. In, for instance, the Mitsubishi exhibit, we are treated to a video of the state of the world were we to not have our moon, and the 'Save the Earth' message randomly tagged on at the end. The JR exhibit, as well, failed to conceive of a pavilion that had even the most remote relation to the Expo's stated guiding principles. While its trains can levitate, the JR exhibit never rose above naked self-promotion.
The one exhibit I saw (and by no means did I see everything - the fabled Toyota and Hitachi pavilions each had lines of over six hours long) that truly forced one to consider one's place in the world, and further, how one should refine and minimize one's presence, was the French exhibit. First there was a fifteen minute short film shown on the walls and ceiling of a boxed room in which moving imagery and statistics blatantly revealed the inequities of social development and the reality of environmental destruction. Complementing this doom came several examples of attempts to reform the current environmental trends. It made the audience think. We're all hypocrites when it comes to our stated ideals and lived practices, but even just realizing that is an improvement from congratulatory back-patting.