NAGAKUTE, Japan -- Word is the robots are the stars of World Expo 2005. Japanese robots of various designs serve functional roles here as multilingual information guides, security guards, garbage collectors, and floor cleaners.
They are also charming crowds as narrators at some pavilions, and as the dexterous stars of the
To fixate solely on the robots, however, would be a mistake.
Expo 2005 has much more to offer if visitors are willing to explore the 427-acre complex: sledding at the Austrian Pavilion, floating in the Dead Sea pool at the Jordanian exhibit, playing with a gigantic kaleidoscope at the Czech display, watching a live satellite feed from the Mars Exploration Rover at the US exhibit, and catching a concert with a top performing artist at the Expo Dome.
Welcome to Expo 2005 near Nagoya, in Aichi Prefecture about 160 miles west of Tokyo. Running for 185 days through Sept. 25, the exposition is the century's first and Japan's second since the 1970 Osaka Expo.
This world fair is a $3 billion-plus venture featuring displays from 121 countries and four international groups. Organizers hope to attract 15 million visitors, with 1.5 million from overseas. More than 6 million people have visited so far.
''I went to the Vancouver Expo [1986], Montreal [1967], and New York [1964]," said Liz Langlois of Oakland, Calif. ''I love expos. I find it fascinating to see the imaginative things they put into them and to see the labor of all the nations that exhibit."
Langlois was among an early-morning crowd riding the Limino, Japan's first maglev train. The Limino was specially built to transport visitors the 18 miles between downtown Nagoya and the Expo site.
''I've told everyone I know there is an expo going on in Japan and no one knew or had heard about it," Langlois said. ''It's shocking to me there hasn't been more publicity."
Yet Langlois, like most US visitors interviewed one month after the opening, acknowledged she was at Expo 2005 by chance. She was in Nagoya to attend her brother's wedding. Others said they were visiting Tokyo, or traveling to other popular sites in western Japan: Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima.
For visitors willing to take a detour to Nagoya's Eastern Hills, the delights are plentiful. Just wear comfortable shoes and be prepared for a lot of walking.
The Japan Expo ''is overwhelming, really big," said Jacob Crawford, 15, of Mishawaka, Ind. ''I really didn't know what to expect."
''It reminds me a little of Disney Epcot," his grandfather Don Crawford chimed in. ''Frankly, I wish they had more transportation."
Onsite transportation is, indeed, the Expo's most glaring weakness. It isn't free, it's slow, and it's inconvenient. Food is another weakness. Quality is uneven and prices are high. Visitors are allowed to bring their own picnics.
The two most popular exhibits are the Toyota Group Pavilion, and the Mammoth Lab. Making advance reservations similar to Disney World's ''Fast Pass" system is the only way to ensure entry into these and other popular exhibits.
The Toyota exhibit has a two-part robot show featuring a robot jazz septet that marches into the 800-seat arena and plays ''When the Saints Go Marching In." Then follows an elaborate movie and floor show with nearly a dozen single-passenger robot vehicles, cavorting dancers, and a trapeze acrobat twirling from the ceiling.
Toyota officials, whose global headquarters is in Nagoya, decline to say how much the company spent on its pavilion, but other corporations have acknowledged spending between $2 million and $30 million each on theirs.
The Mammoth Lab features an 18,000-year-old wooly mammoth head with 12-foot tusks dug from the artic soil of Siberia. The relics are displayed in a first-of-its-kind, subzero refrigerated working lab that is a joint Japanese-Russian venture. Visitors have one minute to view the relics through a glass wall while standing on a moving walkway.
For many Japanese, the Mammoth Lab is the heart and soul of Expo 2005. Japanese press touts the exhibit as meeting the challenge of the park's theme: global coexistence while harnessing ''Nature's Wisdom" for a sustainable future.
The ''Nature's Wisdom" theme is sometimes difficult to discern amid the technological wizardry in the heavily financed corporate arenas and the plain wackiness at a handful of pavilions that are nothing more than excuses to hawk tourist trinkets.
Sometimes, though, visitors find the challenge of the theme is perfectly met, as in the
The exhibit studies the delicate relationship between the Earth and the moon, and the moon's effect on the environment. Talking robots introduce the theme in the lobby. Inside the 325-seat theater, the topic is distilled into an extraordinary 10-minute experience involving computer graphic film, digital projectors, mirrors, and sound effects. A patent is pending for this so-called IFX Theatre.
The exhibit overwhelmed Comins, who visited it last month.
''Right now, this is absolutely the apex of my experience," Comins said with a wide grin as he left. ''If nothing like this happens ever again, I am perfectly satisfied. If this pavilion helps people look at the world and moon differently, even in a tiny number of ways, this pavilion has done everything it possibly could."
The pavilion building is also worth study. Naoyoshi Yamakawa, the pavilion's director general, said Mitsubishi's industrial designers were given free reign to design the exhibit and undertook their task with gusto. The result is ingenious.
Constructed entirely from recyclable materials, the pavilion is made of a spiral wall filled with 40,000 plastic bottles, rocks, tree stumps, and plants. The exterior is decorated with more plants (a mist machine helps keep it green), rocks, bamboo, and 10,000 pieces of locally made plates and cups. The roof is grass. If there is an Expo 2005 Nature's Wisdom award, this pavilion is surely a contender.
Several other sites are worth a look:
The US Pavilion's theme is ''The Franklin Spirit," a celebration of the legacy of Benjamin Franklin on the 300th anniversary of his birth. A multimedia show depicts Franklin's imagined awe at innovations since the 1700s. The show feels a bit tired, but visitors should stop in the display rooms for a peek at a Mars Exploration Rover and an exact replica of the 1902 glider patented by the Wright brothers.
The Mitsui-
The Czech Republic's technology-free pavilion has a distinctive facade of more than 20,000 spruce thorns inserted at various angles to simulate a wheat field. Inside are a water piano, camera obscura, and giant noisemaker.
The Spain Pavilion includes a Salvador Dalí-esque Harvest of Paradise food display and an oversized library tribute to Don Quixote.
Italy's acrylic glass floor over a pool of water offers a soothing respite for weary crowds. First, however, visitors must pass through a metal detector that is still less intrusive than the detectors at the US Pavilion.
Peggy Hernandez is a freelance writer in Japan. 
