Expo, Temples and more Shopping... (Sian)

The night before we left for the Expo 2005 Mr Kodama got us all slightly tiddly on cocktails of Sake and beer. Yuko (Kaoru's Mum) taught me how to make a traditional Japaneese dish of Gyoza, which was delicious. We lost James for the evening as he went off for a date up west. Eventually Steve and I were sent to bed with 2 cans of beer.
After meeting James the next day in the gigantic Tokyo station we took the Shinkansen train to Nagoya which is the nearest city to the Expo site in Aichi. On arrival in Nagoya we had a slight panic when we thought that all the hotels were booked, but luckily we found one that was fine for the three of us.
The Expo was fun, the theme of the event was living in harmony with the planet. 120 countries were represented with little stands and messages about what they were doing to save the planet, and preserve nature. Steve and I took James on a little tour of the countries we have visited, it was fun to share our experiences. It brought back some happy memories of our trip so far. The event was rather crouded and cues for some of the displays were particulaly long, we waited 2 hours for the big wheel! However it was a great experience to be at a world wide event. My favourite and most informative part of the day was the display by Mitzibushi, we learned about how the moon was created and what Earth would be like without the Moon (windy and cold without humans). On entry in to the Mitzibushi exposition we were greeted by Wakamaru robots who walked and talked by themselves. We were taken in to a theatre that had 3 large screens and floor to ceiling glass around the whole theatre. The display was beautiful, it showed cherry blossom bloom which lit up everyones faces. Cherry blossom is a huge event in Japan and everyone will get excited to see a tree in bloom.
The journey back to Tokyo was interesting, we got to experience what it is like to be shoved on a rush hour train at 10.30 at night rather bizarely.
Yesterday Kaoru took us to a lovely temple where we all had our fortunes told. I had the best fortune and Steve the worst, James and Kaoru were the same with something in between. Later when James lost all his shopping we blamed Steve's bad fortune and mine when luckily the shopping was found. The shops around the temple were extremley cute, James and I bought some hair ornaments for our friend Akimbo, who couldn't be with us, and Steve bought a little Shikansen toy train. Steve keeps on saying that his toy train if for his nephew, but I am sure it's for him really!
As it is spring time here we took a stroll through one of the city parks to see 'Sakura' the cherry blossom trees. They are really pretty, but we must have caught the wrong day as only a few were flowering.
To cheer up the boys we went shopping in 'gadget world' Both Steve and James were amazed at how much more technology their is in Japan... Camera's with 7.5 mega Pixels who would have thought it!!
Last night Steve James and I caught up on old times in a bar, maybe mixing our drinks a bit but it was fun none the less!
It was an early morning for Steve and I today, we met Emma from the airport, and are really excited about what adventures lay in store for us now!