Following our stop in Kyoto, we hopped on another bullet train for Osaka. The trip made up over 55km in under 15 minutes, enough time to drink a beer but little else. After an eventful morning, our first order of business was to find something to eat. Misha wanted to try the Osaka staple okonomiyaki, and we found a cool little shop under a train station that rattled as trains passed by overhead. In a previous blog, I mentioned a rivalry between Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Osaka on who makes the best version. Misha was unimpressed, finding the combo of Japanese mayo and barbecue sauce to be less interesting than what she pictured in her mind.
That evening we attended an Orix Buffaloes baseball game, where the legendary Ichiro Suzuki made his start. It was a fun game, but I’ll save my thoughts for a separate, baseball-specific blog. The next day was all about the World Expo, an event that moves around the globe every five years. Nations are invited to join and showcase different innovations and cultural aspects around a central theme. This year’s theme is “Designing Future Society for Our Lives” by saving, empowering, and connecting lives. It was fascinating to see how the 152 countries in attendance designed their pavilions, and how Osaka was able to build infrastructure to accommodate the tens of millions of people that have and will continue to attend the event between April and October, an average of roughly 200,000 per day.
I was able to get entry passes through work, and, despite the heat index again climbing well over 100, we spent nearly 8 hours bouncing from pavilion to pavilion in awe of the spectacle. The only pavilions we didn’t like were Italy, because the huge space was basically one big queue and had terrible air circulation, and the USA. The American pavilion, despite having cool visual displays and a clear order to everything, felt a little discombobulated. There were videos of national parks, mention of advances in science, technology and health, and physical displays of spaceships, but the thread bringing them all together seemed lost to me.
We had several favorites, starting with Hungary, which featured a lone singer in a dark room with an incredibly moving solo performance in Hungarian, though I have no idea what she was singing about (nor how this fit the theme of the Expo). Poland was also very cool, using touch screen monitors to help you digitally design and print flower bouquets. Each plant and flower had a different meaning. Angola had an exciting traditional dance and drum performance, while Indonesia created an indoor jungle. We had a Pimm’s Cup cocktail at the British pavilion to cool off and ate Banh Mi over at Vietnam when we were hungry. The pictures barely even begin to do it justice; it was a truly unique experience, and I’d love to attend another World Expo in the future.
Since we spent our only full day in Osaka at the Expo, we didn’t see much of the city aside from a quick trip to Osaka Castle, though we didn’t go inside. It was far too hot to wait in another extremely long line. We did, however, have two very notable meals. Following the Expo, we had the best bowl of ramen we’ve ever had at a place called The Most Deserted Ramen-Bar in the World. It was on the second floor of an office building, something that is very common in Japan: you walk by all these huge glass buildings hiding amazing restaurants tucked in the floors beneath all the office space.
For breakfast the following morning, we tried the famous fluffy pancakes for the first time. They were…disappointing. They’re made from eggs rather than pancake batter and aren’t as sweet as I was expecting even though I had marshmallows and caramel sauce on mine. Misha tried the earl grey pancakes and had a similar assessment.
We plan on returning to both Osaka and Kyoto. Both cities are packed with fun things to do, and it feels as though we’ve only scratched the surface. Next up, I travel to Hanoi to visit Misha and offer my first impressions of a city Misha will call home for the next few years.
Beer and Diplomacy 
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