offered more than 2 days at the fair but by stealing our free day in Kyoto I could make it three days for the fair which I did. Remember- ing my experience in Montreal three years before I no sooner got within the gates the first day than I called the press office to see about getting a press pass. I was told that we had to get the signature of the American commissioner in the American building first and then go to the press office. So we walked over to the US Pavilion and found the lines to be about four blocks long and about three hours waiting in the hot sun. But we went to the VIP entrance and I was admitted to see the Commissioner. The man I talked to just handed me some forms which I filled out listing myself as Editor and my roommate as a reporter for Chevalier Pubs. He signed them and told me we might as well see the US building since we were already there so we called my roommate in from outside and he let us in the inner door and we saw the whole thing easily. I then walked clear across the grounds to the Press Office and after a little conversation promoted myself a couple of press passes for Chevalier. This only added to my mystery as far as my room mate was concerned. I had to be somebody to get such passes, she felt, but I passed it off by telling her that I had a friend who had this magazine and he had told me to use his name and what to do to get the passes and we were just lucky. It was a great break because we only had to go the VIP entrance of all the main buildings, show the passes and were ushered in to all of them right away. Considering that any building of importance had lines from a couple of hundred feet to three or four blocks long it was marvelous. We got to see more of the fair in three days than most people would see in a week.
The fair was, however, something of a disappointment to Western eyes because it was primarily a Japanese fair for the Japanese. By this I mean it was tailored to them and their standards of understanding. The common people of Japan flocked to it and there were hordes of farmers and their hunchbacked wives and old mothers all over the place. Thus the exhibits were at that level. For instance, the Chemical building, which I naturally wanted to go into, had primarily nothing more than a few show cases and a theater in which a cartoon film symbolically showed what chemistry could do for mankind. It was cute but contributed nothing to me. The Russian building was as usual huge and packed both with people and things. The Russians always try to show everything that they make, build, do, have and teach in Russia and it is so much that you just get tired trying to ab- sorb it all. Fortunately the US planners chose the soft sell here, as they did in Brussels and Montreal, confining themselves to a big display of space things such as the actual Apollo craft that landed on
86