Greetings from Aichi World Expo, Japan

Erich Hoyt and Moses Hoyt travelled through Japan from 4 to 20 August 2005. With Japanese naturalist-photographer Kotoe Sasamori, we gave three standing-room-only "simulated whale and dolphin watch" presentations at the Global Village, Aichi World Expo, in Nagoya, Japan, representing WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. We also led a successful finless porpoise watch in Mikawa Bay near Nagoya on 10th August, with school children and their parents. We were treated to the sight of a group of finless porpoises followed by a finless porpoise clay-making workshop, sponsored by the International Cetacean Education Research Centre-Japan (ICERC). At the ICERC Pavilion, shared with a beach clean-up NGO from Japan called JEAN, and loaded with WDCS booklets on whale watching and waterproof guides, we watched as thousands of people filed through (up to 10,000 visitors a day in August). Our WDCS Expo presentation was created by Moses Hoyt using a state-of-the-art Mac program called Keynote which drew rave reviews from those who saw it.

The theme of this expo, the first world expo of the 21st century, was “nature and sustainability”. It is a fitting theme — for Japan, Asia, the world — and it gave us something to think about as we boarded the shinkansen to Hiroshima in time to witness the 60th anniversary commemoration of the dropping of the A-bomb.