Ten days at Expo 2025 Osaka

Through a friend of my mother’s I got an unexpected chance to work as an intern at Expo 2025 Osaka, and the ten days I spent there were denser and left a deeper mark than any experience I have had.

I assumed, honestly, that it would be errands. An international event, yes, but I was a high-school student and I could not see what it would mean for me. Then I walked onto the site and it was like entering a different world.

The work

Guidance assistance, managing how visitors moved through the space, and simple translation help. It looks straightforward written down. Doing it in front of an unbroken stream of visitors and foreign guests meant I could not let my attention go for a moment, and while I was concentrating on not making mistakes the word responsibility quietly moved into me.

I also learned something I had no idea about: how warm a single passing word can be. Thank you. Arigatou. Gomawoyo. Ten seconds, and it carried me through an hour.

The wooden ring

The place that stayed with me most was the vast circular timber structure at the centre of the site. From a distance it reads as a simple shape. Up close the scale and the beauty of it are almost difficult to breathe around.

I walked it slowly and watched the light come through between the timbers, and for a moment time seemed to stop. Unlike something manufactured, the wood held life in it, and the way people gathered and talked and rested inside it looked like a small village under one enormous tree. In an Expo built around technology, I had not expected to find a space that warm.

The pavilions

I spent every break wandering. Sweden and Indonesia are the two I still think about. Sweden built its sustainable-future theme as a space that seemed to breathe alongside its plants. Indonesia filled the whole room with colour and the smell of spices.

A staff member there asked where I had come from. I said Korea, and she broke into a smile and told me hanbok was really beautiful. It was a short exchange and it moved me more than it should have — that a single word, Korea, could produce that reaction turned into a kind of pride I had not felt before.

The last day, at the Korea pavilion

On the final day I made time to see the Korea pavilion properly. A traditional performance was scheduled for that evening and I had planned to simply watch from the side. The moment it began that intention disappeared.

Janggu and haegeum filled the room and the dance that unfolded felt like travelling backwards through time. The samulnori piece at the end pulled every person in the space into it at once, and the foreign visitors applauded and cheered along with everyone else. I was proud in a way I had not planned for, and I understood again how beautiful the tradition I had grown up next to actually is.

What it changed

This was not simply time abroad. It was a turning point in how wide I understand the world to be. You can communicate through a smile when the language does not match, and you can share being moved when the culture does not. The coexistence I felt inside that timber structure, and the thinking about the future soaked into every pavilion, left me with one question: what kind of future do I want to make?

I am still young. But I learned how broad and how connected the world is, and I have started to sketch what role I want in it. One day I would like to stand on an international site like that again — not as an intern, but in a role of my own.