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Forest felled, work to start on 'wisdom of nature' Aichi expo
NAGOYA (Kyodo) Construction work on pavilions for the 2005 Aichi World Exposition will get into full swing soon.
Work is set to start on pavilions at the main venue of Aichi Expo 2005 in the Nagakute district of Aichi Prefecture.
More than 120 countries and international organizations are lined up to participate in the exposition in the city of Seto in Aichi Prefecture.
The construction cost is estimated at a hefty 135 billion yen.
Exhibits by U.S. state governments and corporations are expected to feature video shows of state-of-the-art technology, including the human genome.
The expo is scheduled to open March 25, 2005, and run for 185 days. It will be the first world exhibition of the 21st century.
If all goes well, it will showcase a Siberian mammoth as a crowd puller.
Akio Etori, a professor of Edogawa University, visited the Aichi Expo Association office in downtown Nagoya last December and unveiled his plan to excavate a mammoth in Siberia, keep it on ice and show it at the expo.
"It will easily become familiar with the public, be in the news and fit perfectly with the (wisdom of nature) theme" of Expo 2005, said Toshio Nakamura, deputy head of the expo association.
Officials of the association told Etori's team of researchers who went to Siberia this summer that they cannot rest easy until they discover "at least the head" of a mammoth.
The theme of the event is the "wisdom of nature," and the association was forced to change the planned Expo site when it was reported in 1999 that a nest of endangered goshawks had been found there. A large tract of forest, however, had to be felled to prepare the current main venue.
Expo officials are reminding themselves not to make the same mistakes as those committed by organizers of Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany.
Gertrud Klueve, who was in charge of marketing in Hannover, said, "Admission tickets (about 3,500 yen for an adult) were beyond the reach of visitors with families. The theme -- 'human beings, nature and science' -- was difficult to understand and there were not enough advertisements."
Hannover Expo officials anticipated 40 million visitors, but only 18 million showed up.
The event ended up more than 100 billion yen in the red.
Aichi Expo officials are hoping for 15 million visitors to their showcase. The number is conservative, compared with the unprecedented 64 million who went to the 1970 exposition in Osaka.
Admission tickets for the Aichi exposition will be priced at 4,600 yen for an adult, higher than the Hannover event.
However, officials point out the price is lower than the 5,500 yen per adult charged by Tokyo Disneyland.
An official in Nagoya said special consideration will be given to family visitors, with tickets for children from 4 years old to the end of elementary school -- about 12 -- costing 1,500 yen. There will be no charge for kids under 4.
The association hopes to sell about 8 million tickets in advance sales starting in September.
However, the Aichi expo is having a problem with name recognition nationwide and even among local people, including some who do not even know when and where it will be held.
A senior association official said, "The 2002 FIFA World Cup finals (in Japan and South Korea) gathered momentum at the last minute," so there still is time before the fair becomes widely known.
Procurement of funds to stage the exposition is a big worry for the association. Of the 135 billion yen needed for construction of the facilities, 90 billion yen will come from the central government and Aichi Prefectural Government as well as other local governments.
The association hopes to get the remaining 45 billion yen through contributions -- 23 billion yen from private-sector corporations and 22 billion yen from events related to municipally operated gambling, including motorboat racing.
It has already obtained about 22 billion yen from companies, but donations collected through gambling have only reached 7 billion yen.
An official said the association may ultimately face a deficit of several billion yen due to the prolonged economic slump.
Harumi Sakamoto, secretary general of the association, called on Yukio Hageyama, head of the national federation of motorboat associations, in Tokyo early last month to ask that crowd-pulling drivers be assigned to Expo support programs.
A portion of the income from ticket sales for such racing events is donated to the association.
Realizing its limitations in getting cash contributions because of the economic doldrums, the association has started asking corporations to donate in kind.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. has agreed to provide a 30-meter-wide, 8-meter-tall light-emitting diode screen to be set up in the Expo central plaza, while Sony Corp. will install a 2,005-inch television in the association's pavilion.
Toyota Motor Corp. -- which is based in Aichi Prefecture -- has offered eight fuel-cell-powered buses that will shuttle between two expo sites.
Meanwhile, land development work for the main exposition site has nearly been completed.
Surrounded by forests, some of which have been cut down to make room for it -- the main site is a sprawling lot with an elevated track for magnetically levitated vehicles to carry people between the sites.
The Japan Times: Aug. 19, 2003
NAGOYA (Kyodo) Construction work on pavilions for the 2005 Aichi World Exposition will get into full swing soon.
Work is set to start on pavilions at the main venue of Aichi Expo 2005 in the Nagakute district of Aichi Prefecture.
More than 120 countries and international organizations are lined up to participate in the exposition in the city of Seto in Aichi Prefecture.
The construction cost is estimated at a hefty 135 billion yen.
Exhibits by U.S. state governments and corporations are expected to feature video shows of state-of-the-art technology, including the human genome.
The expo is scheduled to open March 25, 2005, and run for 185 days. It will be the first world exhibition of the 21st century.
If all goes well, it will showcase a Siberian mammoth as a crowd puller.
Akio Etori, a professor of Edogawa University, visited the Aichi Expo Association office in downtown Nagoya last December and unveiled his plan to excavate a mammoth in Siberia, keep it on ice and show it at the expo.
"It will easily become familiar with the public, be in the news and fit perfectly with the (wisdom of nature) theme" of Expo 2005, said Toshio Nakamura, deputy head of the expo association.
Officials of the association told Etori's team of researchers who went to Siberia this summer that they cannot rest easy until they discover "at least the head" of a mammoth.
The theme of the event is the "wisdom of nature," and the association was forced to change the planned Expo site when it was reported in 1999 that a nest of endangered goshawks had been found there. A large tract of forest, however, had to be felled to prepare the current main venue.
Expo officials are reminding themselves not to make the same mistakes as those committed by organizers of Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany.
Gertrud Klueve, who was in charge of marketing in Hannover, said, "Admission tickets (about 3,500 yen for an adult) were beyond the reach of visitors with families. The theme -- 'human beings, nature and science' -- was difficult to understand and there were not enough advertisements."
Hannover Expo officials anticipated 40 million visitors, but only 18 million showed up.
The event ended up more than 100 billion yen in the red.
Aichi Expo officials are hoping for 15 million visitors to their showcase. The number is conservative, compared with the unprecedented 64 million who went to the 1970 exposition in Osaka.
Admission tickets for the Aichi exposition will be priced at 4,600 yen for an adult, higher than the Hannover event.
However, officials point out the price is lower than the 5,500 yen per adult charged by Tokyo Disneyland.
An official in Nagoya said special consideration will be given to family visitors, with tickets for children from 4 years old to the end of elementary school -- about 12 -- costing 1,500 yen. There will be no charge for kids under 4.
The association hopes to sell about 8 million tickets in advance sales starting in September.
However, the Aichi expo is having a problem with name recognition nationwide and even among local people, including some who do not even know when and where it will be held.
A senior association official said, "The 2002 FIFA World Cup finals (in Japan and South Korea) gathered momentum at the last minute," so there still is time before the fair becomes widely known.
Procurement of funds to stage the exposition is a big worry for the association. Of the 135 billion yen needed for construction of the facilities, 90 billion yen will come from the central government and Aichi Prefectural Government as well as other local governments.
The association hopes to get the remaining 45 billion yen through contributions -- 23 billion yen from private-sector corporations and 22 billion yen from events related to municipally operated gambling, including motorboat racing.
It has already obtained about 22 billion yen from companies, but donations collected through gambling have only reached 7 billion yen.
An official said the association may ultimately face a deficit of several billion yen due to the prolonged economic slump.
Harumi Sakamoto, secretary general of the association, called on Yukio Hageyama, head of the national federation of motorboat associations, in Tokyo early last month to ask that crowd-pulling drivers be assigned to Expo support programs.
A portion of the income from ticket sales for such racing events is donated to the association.
Realizing its limitations in getting cash contributions because of the economic doldrums, the association has started asking corporations to donate in kind.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. has agreed to provide a 30-meter-wide, 8-meter-tall light-emitting diode screen to be set up in the Expo central plaza, while Sony Corp. will install a 2,005-inch television in the association's pavilion.
Toyota Motor Corp. -- which is based in Aichi Prefecture -- has offered eight fuel-cell-powered buses that will shuttle between two expo sites.
Meanwhile, land development work for the main exposition site has nearly been completed.
Surrounded by forests, some of which have been cut down to make room for it -- the main site is a sprawling lot with an elevated track for magnetically levitated vehicles to carry people between the sites.
The Japan Times: Aug. 19, 2003
