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Japanese line up for falafel

After 185 days and 22 million visitors, the 2005 World Expo ended here Sunday. If you didn",t know the expo, themed ",Nature",s Wisdom,", was a fantastic success, you aren",t alone. Expo promotion, and 95 percent of the crowd, were local.

Foreigners aren",t keen, it seems, to wait hours in line, even to see interactive talking animals at the Hitachi pavilion, a 35-foot platypus at Australia",s exhibit, or to sample the curry, falafel, or octopus dumplings that were part of the cuisine of 120 countries.

Yet for Japanese, excitement about the cultures of the world all coexisting in a small high-tech park grew all summer, then turned epic. On Sept. 18, for example, some 37,000 Japanese were turned away at the expo gate. That",s more people than the new Hong Kong Disneyland will allow in its park at one time.