愛地球

Argh. I feel so dead. Woke up at 12.30 today.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my trip.

I went to the following places:
Tokyo Sea Life Park (東京都葛西臨海水族館)
Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (未来館)
Expo 2005 Aichi Japan (愛・地球博)
Tokyo Tower (東京タワー)
Sony Building (ソニービル)
Asakusa Kannon (浅草観音)

Within the Expo itself, I visited the following pavilions:
Hitachi
Mitsui-Toshiba
Mitsubishi
Japan Railways
Mountain of Dreams
Global House
Nagoya Earth Tower
Japan
Singapore
Malaysia
Laos
Iran
Yemen

Don’t ask about the last few…

On an interesting note, the Japanese name for Aichi 2005 is “愛・地球博”, which is read as “Ai Chikyuu Haku”. “Ai” means love and “chikyuu” means Earth. And the expo is at “Aichi”. Aichikyuu, Aichi kyuu…

I also took the cable car and the IMTS (Intelligent Multimode Transport System), where you place your life in the hands of a stuff toy.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see Toyota’s pavilion because the tickets are impossible to obtain.

Corporate displays were generally a lot better than countries, except possibly Japan which has a whole district within the expo for itself.

Mitsui-Toshiba Pavilion screens a Sci-Fi CGI movie that casts the audience as characters. They take a 3D contour image of your face and render the movie within a few minutes, which the company calls “futurecast”. The ending has a nice twist. Other than the futurecast technology, the movie itself also has an impressive resume. Costume design is by Renji Murata (more commonly known as Range Murata), who did designs for GONZO productions such as Blue Submarine 6 and Last Exile. Mechanical designs are by Makoto Kobayashi, who worked on Zeta Gundam, Last Exile and most recently Samurai 7. Script is by Sadayuki Murai, who penned the script for Millennium Actress, a representative work of director Satoshi Kon, and more recently worked on Steamboy. The concept design is by Syd Mead, whose past works include titles that are older than me, including Star Trek and Blade Runner. After the show, you can purchase the soundtrack composed by Akira Senju (Gundam V) and artbooks from Makoto Kobayashi.
Queue Time: 2.5 to 3 hours

The Hitachi Pavilion showcases their vision for a “Ubiquitous World”. While you wait for your turn, monitors outside the pavilion display advertisements for an imaginary Hitachi product that does everything you expect a cellphone/PDA to do and more. Hitachi’s concept of “ubiquitous” is to insert tiny microchips the size of a speck of sand into everything they can think of and provide your device with limitless information. You can place it over a DVD in a shop to see a short preview clip, use it to view the nutritional value of a fruit at the supermarket and things like that. The device also uses a special battery that looks like a green glass rod and apparently lasts a long time but I still have no idea what it actually is. It’s still some way from reality though… The sample product used during the actual presentation demonstration was quite bulky. It lets you view related videos, photos and text when you tap it at a spot near every display, but it’s not known whether all that data is being sent by the microchip embedded in that spot or if everything is already stored within the device and the chip simply issues a command to play it. It’d be a completely useless product if the latter was true. After that short demonstration, you get to go on a “nature ride”, where you wear a hand sensor and look through a pair of goggles that overlaps virtual objects over the room you are looking at. The overlapped images will actually orientate themselves when you look around the room and you can interact with the virtual animals by using the hand with the sensor attached. The goggles can’t gauge actual object distances though, so if you place your hands over it, the images will overlap your hands even if they are depicting virtual objects that are supposed to be farther away. You can download a personalized (low-quality) commemorative picture from the pavilion website with your ticket number.
Queue Time: 2.5 to 3.5 hours

Global House has various small exhibitions and three main ones. You can enter from either the Orange Hall or the Blue Hall. I only entered the Orange Hall, which contains a HUGE HUGE HUGE 600-inch screen that uses the world’s first super high definition image system. The screen is soooo clear that it looks like you are looking through a window with one eye. If they can simulate depth too, then it’d be pretty darn hard to tell apart from a real window. The theatre was said to have 83 speakers positioned all around the audience. They screened a short video of various nature shots to the song “Kokoro Tsutae” (ココロツタエ) by Rimi Natsukawa. The Blue Hall apparently contains a 2005-inch seamless screen that uses special laser projectors. Both halls grant you access to the final hall, which houses the remains of an actual mammoth.
Queue Time: Unknown. Used same-day reservation.

Japan Pavilion Nagakute contains various exhibits you would expect from a normal science museum. The highlight is a 360-degree screen that takes you flying over various sceneries.
Queue Time: Unknown. Used same-day reservation.

Nagoya Earth Tower is basically a huuuge kaleidoscope. You walk in, look up, and see the pretty colours.
Queue Time: Unknown. Used same-day reservation.

Mitsubishi Pavilion is basically a short film on what will happen if the moon didn’t exist. The mascot robot is named “Wakamaru”. “Waka” means young and “maru” means circle.
Queue Time: 40 minutes

Singapore Pavilion is basically an excuse to poor water onto the poor unsuspecting audience. The attendants pass you an umbrella without explanation and usher you into a room where you watch various video clips of Singapore. Then it suddenly starts to “rain”. Many were taken by surprise… There was a group of drenched Japanese school girls standing at the exit when I left the pavilion. ._.
Queue Time: 30 minutes

Other than the World Expo, the Sony Building was also a lot of fun. All latest Sony products on display… I want the new Sony NW-E407 Network Walkman… Goddammit the OLED screen is too cool for words.

Anyway, here are my loots from Japan. And a poster of Mana Kirishima.