One Year Later: How Expo 2025 Inspired an English-Learning Book

This week marks one year since Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan began, and I still feel its magic as strongly as I did across all 40 of my visits.

From my first visit on opening day to my last on closing day, I knew I was experiencing something extraordinary, something that would stay with me long after the Expo ended.

What I did not fully realize at the time was that those visits, reflections, and blog posts would eventually become the foundation for a book.

From Expo Visits to the Page

Throughout my time at Expo 2025, I wrote blog posts to capture what I was seeing, feeling, and learning. Each visit offered new moments of discovery: pavilion experiences, conversations, design details, cultural insights, and the small human interactions that made the Expo feel so alive.

Over time, those posts became more than a record of what I had experienced. They became the starting point for something new.

In the months since the Expo ended, I began transforming my experiences, observations, and reflections into reimagined conversations for English learning.

That work became “Osaka Expo Adventures A–Z: Exploring English Through Curiosity, Culture and Connection at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan.”

Explore the World, One Letter at a Time

Each chapter in the book focuses on one letter of the alphabet and a visit to a country pavilion whose name begins with that letter.

A Book Built Around Conversation, Culture, and Curiosity

The project will be released in two volumes. Volume 1, covering the letters A to M, launches in the first week of May, with Volume 2, covering N to Z, planned for approximately two weeks later.

At the heart of both volumes are two Japanese teenage characters who guide readers through each chapter in a warm, conversational way. Through them, I wanted to bring the learning journey to life in a way that feels accessible and engaging.

More Than an English-Learning Resource

These books can support English learning, conversation practice, self-study, and discussion. They can also encourage cultural exploration, global curiosity, and the kind of reflection that helps people connect across languages and backgrounds.

Expo 2025 was a global classroom, one filled with stories, encounters, and lessons far beyond the ordinary. English language learning is not only about mastering words and structures; it is also about learning how to notice, ask, connect, and understand.

What This Project Means to Me

This project grew from real places, real encounters, and a deep belief that language learning can open doors in ways that are both practical and personal.

As this one-year anniversary arrives, I feel grateful for the Expo experience itself, for everything it inspired in me, and for the opportunity to shape those experiences into something I hope will be meaningful and useful to others.

Creating this has been a way of honoring not only what I saw at Expo 2025, but also what I felt there: the energy of international exchange, the joy of discovery, and the power of communication to bring people closer together.

Looking Ahead

Thank you to everyone who has followed this journey so far. I’m excited to share more as the May release date for Volume 1: A–M gets closer.

Stay tuned...