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We buy Japan Rail Passes which allow us greatly discounted rail travel for a week. This is how we get around the country. We take the Shinkansen everywhere and man, they don’t lie when they say that that train is fast. The whole thing shakes when another goes past at 100mph. I didn’t realise before I went but there are many varieties of bullet train, and we sample a good bunch of them. You have to be organised and fast to catch the train. They stop at each station for only 30 seconds, so you must be lined up on the platform where your carriage will stop in plenty of time. It is thrilling to see these huge and mega-fast trains pull into the station for you. Inside the train is occupied by business people and daytrippers. The seats are small and we have to cram our wide western arses into them. There’s no room for our luggage. No matter, the uniformed guard has a special locker for bulky suitcases. The people who work on the trains are meticulous, they bow as they enter and leave the carriage, they nip onto the train and clean it out within five minutes, everything runs exactly to time, everything is neat and clean and precise. But you will never see a male trolley attendant, or a female train guard, these things simply are not done. You probably know this already but no one ever has to travel backwards on a bullet train, at each terminus staff rotate the seats to face the front. And outside, you will see this: a more or less never-ending sprawl of cities and towns, rice fields, rivers and mountains, people on bicycles, very cute houses, flood plains. If you look carefully you will also see the facades of a couple of big faux cathedrals, and some broken plaster dinosaurs. |
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