Retraction time…

I wrote this entry believing that the prices quoted below were true, but I’m starting to hear that they may not be.

I looked at the Official Site when I wrote this and they really don’t list prices beyond the ticket prices. As to the price of a drink or whether or not they charge you for the rest rooms, I don’t know. I should have dug deeper.

I’d heard it from a coworker and when I read it again on Kissui, I didn’t check further. Now, I’m starting to believe that I was a victim of a malicious rumor. That’s the downside of this medium, where a meme can spread around the world in a matter of hours. Sometimes you get bitten by something that sounds true, but just isn’t. It sure sounded possible though. After all, Japan is a country where a cup of coffee can easily cost $6 and where I once paid $10 for a bowl of instant ramen, though that was at the top of Mount Fuji…

Still, I don’t know that these prices are accurate and I really don’t feel like participating in somebody’s personal vendetta against the expo.

Please accept my apologies.

Yuki at Kissui has some interesting statistics on Aichi Expo:

Kissui.net: The Facts About Aichi Expo ^[1]

The Facts About Aichi Expo

4600 yen for entry fee.
1 hour to get in linear motor car.
1 hour to get in the site.
…

600 yen for using the toilet.

600 Yen (~$6) for using the toilet.

Could be that that little tidbit is what people remember about this event, what they tell people when they go home and talk to people who haven’t yet made up their mind as to whether they’ll make the trip out there to see this thing.

Exhibitors have been preparing for Aichi for a long time, at great expense, some of them foreign companies paying for a team of employees to spend months here in preparation and staffing the event. For some of them, this could be a “make or break” event for their company. If I was one of those companies, I’d be pissed.