Osaka Expo 2025 – Do you need to reserve? Full Pavilion guide! Travel in Japan 大阪関西万博
Hi everyone, David here. Welcome back to
the channel. Thanks for coming back for another video, or welcome if it’s your first time. Thanks
for joining us. Are you doing OK? I’m doing OK. It’s just really hot in Osaka now.
We’ve reached July. This is July the 2nd as I’m recording this, rainy season seems to have
gone already. It hasn’t rained that much. So we’re roasting in Osaka. that’s not just British people
talking about the weather, that’s pertinent to today’s information. I’m talking to you about
the Osaka Expo. You’re probably getting sick of this little guy. I think I’m starting
to get sick of him, too. I’ve been making these twice a month pavilion diaries that I’ve
been visiting. I’ve been there 10 times now. And the end is perhaps getting in sight now.
We’re almost halfway through the event itself. This little guy is driving me crazy trying to
get into some of these pavilions that are difficult to book. So I’m going to help
you with that. I’m going to tell you firstly how to book. I’ve done some information
about that previously about how to have a good enjoyable visit at Expo. Please check out
that video. I’m going to briefly talk about the reservations again, mostly I’m going to focus
on which pavilions you need to reserve, which you don’t, which ones are in the liminal space,
the twilight zone where sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. Yeah. So, I’m going
to navigate through the muddy waters of the reservation system. Hopefully that’s useful
for you. I’m going to try and fight with this guy. So before that, please like this video. Please
subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. Share this video with anybody who’s planning to
visit the Expo. this will be useful for them. Also, leave a comment or a question. I’m happy
to hear that. I’m happy for the attention! So, yeah, let me have it. If there are mistakes,
then please let me know. Put it in the comments. Be nice, though. I’ve really
tried hard to make sure everything’s correct. And things ARE subject to change. I think things
are generally settling down a little bit now. The amount of reservations you need for
certain pavilions has been ebbing and flowing. I think they found a nice middle zone now.
So hopefully it won’t change too much after this. But there we go. I’m going to go straight to my
little PowerPoint zone. You can see I’m already in the Myaku Myakuverse. I’m going to put
him down for now. So let’s go to my first slide. Let’s take a look at how to make reservations.
There are some important things to remember First, before you do any reservations, you’ve got
to book your entry day, book your entry time, and book your entry gate as well. After that
you can start making reservations. You can reschedule your entry day and all the other
stuff but you will lose all your reservations. You’ll have to start back at Square One. You can
adjust it up to three times before you’re stuck, for the day ticket holders. But people getting
the passes, they don’t need to worry about that. So the season pass, and summer pass which
is coming into effect very soon in a couple of weeks I think, that’s good. So, if you’re
thinking about getting a pass, if you’re going to get the miles in and visit a lot, then
you might want to consider the complete pass, the season pass, it’s called. But the Summer
Pass is going to run for about 6 weeks. from the middle of July to the end of August.
So, that might be a cheaper option for you if you don’t mind the heat. So, once you’ve booked your
date and your time, the gate is also important. Most people are entering through the East Gate,
which is where the metro station is. The West Gate is for people arriving by shuttle
bus or maybe taxis, and what’s the other one? Boats as well, there’s a port! Excuse me! Before
we were pretty separate. The West Gate is a lot quieter. They have opened a new footpath
from the East Gate to the West Gate that takes you outside the park and all the way around. I’ve
heard it takes about 15 to 20 minutes on foot. There’s not a lot of shade though, so please
be careful. So if you want to do that, come out of the train station at the East Gate,
if you want to arrive there. And then there’s a little path across the road or
under the road where the flags are. So in in the middle of the flags, there’s a little route
out and you just follow it around, hug the wall of the Expo Park and you’ll eventually get to
the West Gate. So that might be good if you’re having trouble booking the time you want
because they’re booking up fast. So my advice, first advice is to book early so you can get an
earlier slot. Now once you’ve reserved things, we have four chances to get reservations.
Good luck if you’re going to get all four. First we’ve got the two-month lottery, which runs from
3 months before entry to 2 months + one day before entry. If you reach your 2 months before
then it’s too late already. That is entering you into a lottery. You can choose up to five
reservations to enter. They can be all the same pavilion at different times. They can be different
pavilions, different times. You can mix & match, that’s all OK. But you will only get a maximum
of one reservation out of that. So you’re not going to get five. You’re only going to get
one. So they go for your first choice first, then the second, then third, all the way down.
If you don’t get anything, then there you go. I’ve had that experience already! Some things
are not panning out with the two-month advance lottery. Then you’ve got the 7 Day
advance lottery, which is 1 month to 8 days before entry. Same deal. Choose five and
then you’ll get one of them at best. Then, brace yourself, we’ve got the trolley-dash
crazy moment, the available slot reservations, also known as the first come first served. So
3 days before your entry at that midnight, so it’s 3-and-a-bit days, I guess.
They will open the reservations up for you to just grab what you can. Again you
can only grab one reservation at midnight. Log in early, log in probably before 23:00
just to make sure you can get in, and even then good luck to you, because the website keeps
crashing consistently. You’ll get constant error messages for ages and you’ll be furious like
I have been. So good luck if you get anything! To be honest, if it’s after 1:00 am then
probably most of the things have gone already, unless you’re getting wheelchair access
pavilions. Be careful because the pavilions have wheelchair access ones & regular access.
So make sure you’re choosing the right one. If you get a wheelchair access reservation and
then you don’t have a wheelchair, surprise, they’re not going to let you in. So that’s the
crazy midnight rush. I hate this so much! I I’ll be glad to see the back of this! Then when you
actually enter the park, 10 minutes afterwards, the website should hopefully refresh and
you can try to get on-site reservations on the same day. Again, good luck with that!
People are snatching up reservations as soon as they find them. If you enter at 9:00 and you can
get in quite early, then there’s a good chance you can grab something, especially weekdays.
Weekdays are a lot easier. And there are special terminals throughout the park. You’ll see them
on the big map, but you can actually line up and do the manual thing on the website. I think
that’s probably a bit more reliable. I haven’t tried it yet, though. So there we go. Good luck with
the reservations! It’s getting harder and harder! Reserving anything at the on the weekend
is becoming a little nightmare. So maybe you don’t want to bother with all that. Maybe you
just want to see what you can get into without any bother at all. So, here we are on to the
juicy bits. So, let’s take a look at the countries you can, or the pavilions you can enter with no
restrictions at all. Just free entry. You just line up and go in. So, we’ve got quite a few.
We’ve got Azerbaijan, we’ve got Bahrain, Brazil, China, Colombia, Czechia, Malta, Monaco, Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, I don’t know how you pronounce that, Turkiye, the UAE, Uzbekistan,
and the Nordic Circle- that is a collaboration of all the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland,
Sweden, Iceland, and Norway. They’re all in one pavilion. So, you can just line up for those
and hope for the best. Some of them are quite long lines. Malta seems to have a long line
for some reason. China obviously has a long one. Usually they’re not too bad. The UAE you
can often just walk straight, that is a very big space. My advice, don’t line up
for the Nordic Circle if it’s a long line because it’s… a little bit minimal. Also with no
restrictions are the Commons Pavilions. Now, a lot of the small countries have
slots in the Commons Pavilions. There’s probably over 100 countries represented in the
Commons. There are four big ones, A, B, C, D, those are the big Commons pavilions. There’s
F, which has only got three countries inside. There is a Commons E if you’re wondering,
But that’s kind of being used as a temporary exhibition space and I’m not sure what they
are going to do with it. It’s just kind of random stuff in there. No countries though!
Also there’s an International Organizations pavilion which is a bit like the Commons
only not for countries. They’ve got things like the ASEAN union in there and a few other ones
like that. So you can check those out for free too. Also, there are a few kind of miscellaneous
ones. Earth at Night, which, despite the name is nothing to do with astronomy.
It’s a kind of a lacquered globe, which is very impressive, but not about space.
Don’t worry about that. The European Union, has one, too. The Future Life Village, not to
be confused with the Future City, that is a large, pavilion. I’ll talk about that later. Future
Life Village is in the West Gate area off to the back of the park. That has a lot of
various bits and bobs about future life. They’ve got a Mars meteor there, I think,
something like that. I’m not confusing it with the Japan pavilion, there’s something in there
too. There’s also JAXA, the Japan Space Agency. You can see a nice movie there. There’s
the ORA Gaishoku Utage, ORA is the Osaka Restaurant Association. So there’s lots
of restaurants and food workshops there, which is kind of interesting. On the second floor, you
can make noodles, you can make okonomiyaki. And finally, Yoshimoto, the comedy pavilion.
Yoshimoto is a famous comedians theatre in Namba. They’ve got a big open area
with an amateur karaoke area. There’s also a display inside the big smiley face thing,
which is very bizarre. Don’t line up for that for a long time! You can just walk in during the
evening if you really want to take a look at it. So those are totally free with no restrictions.
So that doesn’t seem like a lot, does it? But the next page hopefully will make you
feel a bit better. This is free entry with possible restrictions. What I mean by this is
sometimes the lines get long and it’s kind of impractically long. They’re going to spill
out into the main walkways. So, they limit the lines sometimes when it’s busy.
So, you might not be able to line up for it. They might have other restrictions. They
might close it to let down the crowd size a little bit. So, these are mostly
open, mostly free. So, you’ve got a fairly good bet you can see these countries without any
trouble. So we’ve got Algeria, Angola, Austria, the Baltic Pavilion, which is a collaboration of
Lithuania and Latvia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, Egypt, France,
Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mozambique, Oman,
Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Senegal, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia,
Turkmenistan and the United States of America. They vary greatly in size and line length.
For example, places like Algeria and the Baltics, you can pretty much walk in there.
It doesn’t take very long to walk in. Well, Belgium has quite a long line, but again it
doesn’t take that long. Egypt has a colossal line. it’s not large, but it takes a long time.
They let people in very slowly. France and USA have by far the longest lines
of any of the free pavilions. I’ve heard that the French one moves quicker than it looks.
So, it looks like a colossal line, but it might not take that long. I haven’t brought myself
up to it yet. It’s too sunny. I’m just going to bide my time. And the USA, they
let people in in groups. So, timing is everything. There is an English tour
as well. The English tour group line opens once an hour at 30 minutes past the hour until 7:30.
So if you can speak English…well you don’t even really need to speak English
that well, because it’s mostly displays and things. So you might want to join the English tour
because that’s a lot shorter. But yeah, most of these you can just wander into
and there’s not too much trouble. OK, so that’s quite a lot of pavilions you can wander
into. Now, let’s look at some where you can reserve them, but you could just wait in the line.
OK, so we’ve got quite a few of these too. We’ve got Australia, Canada, Hungary, Poland,
Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom, the Women’s Pavilion in collaboration with
Cartier, the Iida Group’s collaboration with Osaka Metropolitan University, the Red Cross
and the Red Crescent, the United Nations, the Japanese Pavilion and the Netherlands. I’ll
deal with those first. Those ones you can reserve but you don’t need to. You can just wait for
them to let you in. For example, the Women’s Pavilion, sometimes they let you line up
for cancellations. So that’s an example. Japan does have a free entry time. They’ve
got 9:00 to 10:45 in the morning and also after 6:30. The Netherlands also 9:30 to 10:30 and
also after 7:00. So, if you go there at that time, you can just freely enter. You have to line up
to get in though still, if you don’t reserve. At other times you do have to reserve that. Now,
I strongly recommend reserving the following: Again, you could line up for them, but no
guarantees. These are harder to get into. We’ve got Italy and the Holy See. They’re
together. Tech World, which is on the down low this is the Taiwanese pavilion, but they can’t
call it that. The Blue Ocean Dome, Pasona Natureverse, Future City, Kuwait,
Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and the Gas Pavilion. These have very long lines. you can wait
for cancellations if you want, but you might be waiting for a long time. Future City is a
very huge area, too, so it might be worth reserving that instead of having to wait outside.
It’s very sunny out there, too. Italy & the Holy See has a huge line as well. I think that’s
also one of the longest ones in the park. But it can be done! But if you manage to get
one of those golden reservations, even better. Kuwait’s very popular, too. And these other
company ones are quite hard to come by too. So those are the ones where you can reserve,
but you don’t necessarily have to. Now, let’s move on to the Signature Pavilions. These
are eight pavilions designed by famous Japanese artists or scientists, and they come in
a few different flavours too. Some of them are reservation only, no exceptions or cancellations,
you just have to get a reservation. So, Better Co-Being, the elusive null2, or “Nuru Nuru” and Earth Mart. You need a reservation for these, No ifs, no buts. There are cancellation lines
available for the Dialogue Theatre: Sign of Life, Dynamic Equilibrium of Life, and Future of Life
pavilions. So that means you can reserve it and you probably should reserve it, but you
could bide your time and wait for some cancellations. Also the Playground of Life,
the Jellyfish Pavilion and Live Earth Journey, they do need reservations but there are free
areas that you can go into. Live Earth Journey has a little outside display. Excuse me!
And the Jellyfish Pavilion, I can’t say that… on the top floor, there’s a little playground.
You don’t need a reservation for that at all. So, good luck with the
Signature Pavilions. Excuse me, I’m so dry! Let’s see what’s left, what else have we got?
Reservations only, we’ve got some of the company ones. We’ve got the Kansai pavilion, The Electric Power pavilion, Panasonic, Gundam Next Future and the Sauna Taiyo Tsubomi. These need reservations, end of story. It seems the Kansai Pavilion and Gundam are often
available in the same day reservations, so you might be able to snatch one of those. Electric
Power is not too bad either. Panasonic I’ve very rarely seen. I’ve never seen the Sauna pop up on
there. Maybe you need to reserve that before. Excuse me! There are a few that you can access
certain areas of it, but you need a reservation for the main thing. So, Osaka Healthcare: The
Reborn experience. You need to reserve that, but you can get into the restaurant underneath.
The Air Mobility Station, you can see the big drone taxi, but you can’t get in and have a photo
taken, which you need a reservation for. Excuse me, Oh dear! NTT – I don’t really know what
areas are free access there, but for most of it, you do need a reservation. And Under The Midnight Rainbow is the water show. Currently, it has been cancelled completely because they
found Legionella bacteria in the pipes. So, until they’ve worked that out, they are cancelling
it. It does seem to have been replaced by another drone show. There usually was
only a drone show at 9:00 but there’s also seems to be one at 8:00 now or possibly a little bit
earlier. So, you can check out the drone show a bit early instead. And to be confirmed is Nepal.
Nepal has not opened yet. That’s why it’s to be confirmed! But I’ve got word that it has
restarted construction. They had some trouble with the construction and contractors, but that’s confirmed to be coming soon. So they are finishing things off. For example, Angola
was much delayed. That just opened last week, I think. So OK, I think that’s
everything. So, those are all of the pavilions I could think of to give you information for.
I hope that’s useful! Let me know in the comments if you have questions about it, but
otherwise stay tuned to this channel. I’ve got lots of more information for you, including a look at all the pavilions eventually, I’ll start to compile them so you can watch them in chunks.
Yeah, that’s about it. OK, so I’ve got all all his secrets now. Hopefully I might be
able to spill some more secrets by the end of this event. I hope you enjoyed that. Please like
this video, subscribe to the channel, like I said, leave a comment or a question. And also, share
this channel to anyone who’s thinking of going to the Expo. This will help them out a lot! Leave
me a Super Like if you found this really useful and you were searching around for useful
information about reservations and here it is! Please help me out, I don’t make any money from this channel except through donations. I haven’t been monetized yet, but please
help me out. That’s enough for today! Thank you so much for coming and I’ll see you
you again in the future. OK, take care. Bye-bye!
The 2025 World Expo has opened in Osaka’s new Yumeshima Island in April 2025. Almost 3 months in, and I have now visited 10 times – it hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve suffered in order to help you with your visit!
So today, I’m going to go through EVERY Pavilion at Osaka Expo, and tell you if you need a reservation or not. Of course it’s not as simple as that, some pavilions have limited free access but need reservations at other times, some can be reserved but maybe don’t need to be!
So don’t worry, I’ve got you, please watch my information about how to navigate the reservation system, and then the full directory of pavilions and their entry conditions.
This information is evolving constantly, it seems to be settling down a bit now, but this is the information I had at the end of June. Let me know in the comments if you have anything more up-to-date!
If you found this useful, I would really appreciate a Super Like, I’m doing this whole channel by myself and out of my pocket with no monetisation. So a Super Like would help me pay the bills!
Or you could even join one of my membership levels for exclusive content and access.
Thank you all for your support so far – it’s only just beginning, I hope, so please continue to support me in my fourth year. I appreciate all my subscribers, and my next goal is to get my annual viewing time up so I can grow my channel more in 2025. I think it’s possible! Please like, subscribe, comment and share! Thank you!
#osakaexpo #expo2025 #worldexpo2025 #worldexpo #kansai #japan #travelinjapan #sightseeing #expo #myakumyaku #大阪関西万博 #大阪万博 #大阪万博2025
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