Although the Expo Osaka 2025 has already ended, I have three more journal entries to share. My husband and I visited the Expo venue again a couple of seeks ago. That day, we visited lots of spots, and it was difficult to include all the pictures in one entry, so I decided to divide the day into two entries.

The day started with the Thai Pavilion.

First, we enjoyed watching a traditional Thai dance performance.

When we entered, there was a screen that introduced some basic Thai phrases.

The Thai Pavilion featured its food. I'm a huge fan of Thai cuisine, so it was fascinating to look around.

The picture below shows some spices used for Thai cooking.

There was a section where visitors could experience Thai massage.

There was another section where we could enjoy virtual cooking. This was very interesting because I was curios about knowing the benefits of spices.

The picture below shows varieties of Southern Thai dishes which are my favorite!

We came across a restaurant and figured out why all the time we'd been smelling food inside the building. If there hadn't been such a long line, I would definitely have bought something to eat.

There is an interesting story about tilapia ( a kind of fish). When the former emperor Akihito was a prince, he visited Thailand in 1964. Since he was an expert of fish, he enjoyed visiting fish farms. Back then, people in Thailand couldn't get enough nutrition. When he realized that their fish farms hadn't worked well, he suggested growing tilapia because it's one of the easiest fish to do. After returning to Japan, he sent fifty tilapia to the King Rama IX. The king grew them in the palace and quickly succeed to increase over 1000. Since then, tilapia has become one of the top of resauces of protein, and it's named 仁魚 from one of the kanji characters of Akihito (明仁).

After leaving the Thai Pavilion, we went to the Saudi Arabia Pavilion. The next Expo will be held in Saudi in five years, so we were very curious about it. Some of my friends said they would go there.

We waited in a line for two hours, but everybody got a free book about Arabian leopard.

A group of people from Saudi Arabia were performing a traditional dance in front of the entrance. They were holding knives and looked very powerful.

When we entered, several handmade tapestries greeted us.

There were also books about the country that had been published in Japanese.

I found it interesting that Saudi has been researching coral reefs.

They also have studied about Arabian leopards that are endangered species. I didn't know about them until I visited the pavilion.

When we went out, we saw the Arabian leopard's performance, which looked like a puppet show. It was fascinating to watch!

The high light of the first half was Gundam ( a Japanese anime) ! I'm not a fan of it, but it looked so neat. The Gundam Pavilion was so crowded that we decided not to go in. Instead, I took some photos. The pose with its raised a hand looked divine.

This entry will continue to the Part 9.

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