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Monday, September 26, 2005
aichi world expo
finally the long running expo came into an end yesterday.... (and i have yet to post my photos of the trip there ;p)...
yesternite, there were lots of news on the said event, since it was the last day. the crown prince as well as the PM were all there for the (rather boring-looking, except for aya matsuura) closing ceremony.
it was crazy - the last day being, a lot of ppl wanted to be a part of it. japan, IMO, is a country who is number 1 in the world at queues. really. forget about the hello kitty queues in singapore, those are nothing. forget about the singapore idol queues, or the queues into mtv asia, etc. events. japan is da bomb.
watched on one news last nite, the nite before, at ard 1 am, there were already 2178 ppl in line for the expo. ok... that's not too surprising... when they interviewed a 50 over year old looking man how many times he'd been to the expo, he replied, smiling, "140."
140??? gosh that is crazy. 1 time is enough for me. yet he can go 140 times. amazing.
come morning, before the gate was opened at 8:10 (50 minutes earlier than usual), there were already about 35,000 ppl lining outside the north entrance. obviously when the gates were opened, everyone did sprints to their preferred choice of pavilions. it was kinda amusing to see tv journalists trying to interview ppl who are running... they were like asking which pavilions they were aiming to visit first, and the interviewees were all running and shouting back "hitachiiii......" voice trailing off as they were running... hehe...
after awhile, there were already signs outside pavilions posting waiting time in queues... 480 minutes!! ie. 8 hours! yup, that crazy.
the tv journalist followed a family of 4 around the pavilion. i guess they didnt come as early as the rest, since everywhere they went, they encounter a 終了 sign (ended). the poor family even met with a 4 hour queue in an attempt to have dinner in one of the restaurants. they finally settled for ready cooked, cold and yucky yakisoba. ended the day with 0 pavilions visited, yucky food, and 17,000 yen poorer. poor them.
that also being the last day, you could see some of the pavilions selling off their exhibits and their props (such as loudspeaker)... hehe...
in the end, a reported 22 million visitors have visited the expo in the entire duration. that's really a lot if you think about the number of visitors everyday... it's almost surely jam-packed everyday. i can't even think how the situation was back in 1970, when the world expo in Osaka boasted 70 million visitors!
anyway, whether it was good or bad, it has ended. next will be in Shanghai. i wonder how the chinese government will be able to crowd control, cos some chinese i have met like to cut queues and stuff (not saying the entire chinese population is like that, so dun flame me if you are chinese and offended). at least in japan, they have queue manners. well, we shall see.
posted by winz at 9:55 AM
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