(10 of 10)
You can watch Japanese warriors play vigorous sword games on a stage surrounded on two sides by water and backed by a thunderous Nagare wall. They smash one another over the head with wooden poles, shouting noises of guttural rage, bobbing, feinting, taking clever steps backward and occasionally falling by accident into the water. You can try on a Panamanian straw hat, test a Nicaraguan wooden spear, and talk to a stranger in California while you stare into his eyes on television-telephone. Alaskan Chilkat Indians will tell you how to make totem poles: start by floating the log in a lake until it steadies, then split off the upper third, since that is where the most knots are.
The great fair succeeds, in the end, because it so abundantly contains the variety of the world. You have only to walk through it to discover continents in the corners of your eyes.
*This price and those that follow are at the adult rate. Children's rates are lower.