The romance continues: Former ‘Singapore girl’, 77, returns to Osaka Expo after 55 years

SINGAPORE - She was 22 when she lived for three months in Osaka, as one of four “Singapore girls” representing the young Republic in its first World Expo outing in 1970.

In May 2025, Ms Florence Tan, now 77, returned to the western Japanese city’s second Expo – as a visitor and the oldest contributor to the Singapore Pavilion display.

Much more discreet than the ethnic dresses and variously styled wigs that made up her costume in 1970, her contribution at this year’s event is one of 60 small pieces of art printed on a wall of the pavilion’s cafe. Each artwork was selected from submissions to a nationwide open call.

World Expos are universal fairs for nations to flash their technological or cultural achievements, and have since the first edition in Britain, circa 1851, produced such monuments as The Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower.

Ms Tan’s entry for the 36th World Expo reflects a tender personal history. Drawn with what she waves away as “simple software”, it is a template disc filled with a ring of photos from her 1970 Osaka stint, ending with a recent picture with her two grandchildren.

In the centre is a tag line she repeated several times while speaking to The Straits Times: “Fifty-five years... The romance continues.”

Her 1970 Expo outing launched her love affair with Japan. It was her first time out of Singapore, and she was astonished by the changing of the seasons, said the retired businesswoman.

She lived off tinned curry and eggs from winter to spring to save money, she added.

In her middle age, Ms Tan studied Japanese for three years at the Japanese Association and watched Japanese TV programmes.

“I really appreciate all the fine things of Japan. They call it ikigai (a passion that gives joy to life); it’s a lifestyle,” said Ms Tan.

A later interest in Japanese skincare led to a job selling Japanese beauty products and, eventually, her own salon – the first in Singapore to stock luxury Swiss brand La Prairie.

But really, “it’s about connection and relationships”.

Ms Tan means it literally.

She has kept up a 55-year friendship with an Osaka woman who worked as one of the Singapore girls, hired to make up for Ms Tan’s and her Singapore Tourism Board colleagues’ then paltry Japanese language skills, she said.

“You can learn a lot from them (the Japanese). Hospitality, cleanliness...” she said.

She found wisdom in other cultures too. From the German delegation, she learnt steel and guts. “They are fierce and very professional,” she said. From the Swiss, she took conscientiousness, or a habit of pushing down paper in public bins to keep trash from spilling over the rim, she said.

It was the kind of cross-border exchange that in effect bore out, on a micro scale, the Expo’s contemporary stated purpose of global togetherness.

In 1970, 64 million people visited Osaka’s first Expo, as Japan’s post-war economy soared. But its second run is reportedly not pulling in the numbers.

Organisers had aimed for 28.2 million visitors over the Expo’s six-month run, or sales of about 150,000 tickets daily.

As at late April, ticket sales had petered out to as low as 40,000 a day at the fair, which has come to be plagued by public cynicism and indifference, a far cry from its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But for Ms Tan, the romance continues.

Correction note: In a previous version of the story, it was reported that Ms Florence Tan’s artwork is one of 15 displayed at the Singapore Pavilion cafe. This is incorrect. It is one of the 60 displayed.