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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/bad_ed_ucation on 2025-04-13 09:00:23+00:00.

Hi everyone.

Today, my partner and I were at Expo 2020 in Osaka - it’s also the opening day. We booked tickets months ago because I am a big fan of an Expo (been to previous ones in Milan and Dubai) and because Ado is performing an opening day concert and it was possible to ballot to attend if you had tickets. We weren’t successful, but we had the Expo tickets so thought we’d go anyway.

We arrived at 1000. Security checks to get in took about 40 minutes, which wasn’t great but wasn’t terrible. Probably the first sign that something was going a little wrong was that to buy our Expo passports (for those unfamiliar: at every Expo you can buy a little passport-sized book that you can use to stamp all of the ‘countries’ you’ve been to), we had to queue for 20 minutes to get into the gift shop, even though the day had only just begun.

Then, the rain started - just as we were in line for the Spanish pavilion. That’s when things started to go from pretty overwhelming to unbearable.

The rain, of course, can’t be helped. But it did exacerbate the problem of crowds. It seems pretty clear that far too many people were being allowed on-site - it felt like all of Osaka was there (very few foreign tourists, incidentally). And when the rain came, it pushed all of us towards the indoor areas (of which there were relatively few). The indoor common zones where several countries share pavilion space were literally shoulder-to-shoulder. There were swarms of people trying to see even rather minor country pavilions like Croatia or Ukraine.

By this point - some time around 1430 - we’d decided that we were not having fun and that we wanted to leave. This was easier said than done. By this point, the queues were beyond parody. At previous Expos I’d been to, one could expect (sometimes long) waits for the more important purpose-built national pavilions. But today, people were queueing for almost literally everything: for very minor pavilions, to use the toilet, to enter the food courts, to enter the sourvenir shops and even the 7-Eleven. We waited 20 minutes to use the shuttle bus to get from the West Gate to the East Gate (and they even had the nerve to charge us for it!). We even waited half an hour to leave, just after 1500.

My question to you all, I suppose, is if anyone has any insight into whether we were just dumb to have gone on the opening day, or whether this is just what this Expo will be like. If so, that would be an enormous shame - in many ways, it is a very impressive feat. I’d pencilled it in to go tomorrow as well, but if it’s anything like today I’m not sure I can put my poor partner through it again!

I’d also be very happy to answer any questions about my visit - I am sure lots of people here will be looking forward to going.