The car pulls into Yumeshima Station with a shhh, and the gleaming doors with a trim of neon green lights open onto a brand new train platform. I’m headed to the Osaka Expo 2025, a six-month world fair that wants to “design future society for our lives,” and though I expect a whisper-quiet entrance to match the train ride, my first thought is that the future is very loud and full of rules.
As the doors open, I’m hit with a wall of sound. As if in anticipation of waves of lost people in uncontrollable crowds, the expo has stationed attendants every few meters, each armed with a megaphone, each shouting instructions at the same time, but out of sync. The blare reverberates in the metro tunnel, bouncing against the ceiling of an expansive hall and atrium, the layered intensity and crisscrossing directives ultimately making it impossible to decipher any message at all.
Welcome to the Osaka Expo.
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