I rode on a Japanese bullet train!
These high-speed trains, called “Shinkansen”,
are the backbone of Japan’s passenger rail network. Shinkansen rail lines stretch across
almost the entire country, with trains travelling at speeds of up to 320km/h!
Japan was the first country to build dedicated high-speed rail lines starting in the late 1950s,
and since then, the Shinkansen has carried over 10 billion passengers!
Now, you may have noticed that I tend to show a different mode of transportation on
this channel. That’s because, at home in Calgary, Canada, high-speed rail… or any inter-city rail,
just doesn’t exist. As a result, I basically grew up on highways like most North Americans,
so long-distance passenger trains have always been… almost a novelty for me.
So, during my trip to Japan with friends back in May,
a ride on a Shinkansen was very much on our list.
Today’s journey starts in the city of Hiroshima,
the largest city in the Chūgoku Region of Japan. Hiroshima has a population of around 1.2 million,
situated among these beautiful rolling hills on the western side of the island of Honshu.
It is, however, the site of a sobering piece of history, when the city became the first target
of a nuclear weapon on August 6th, 1945. Since then, Hiroshima has been rebuilt as a symbol
of peace and hope, and the city continues to advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Much of the area near the hypocentre of the explosion has become the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Park. There, the ruins of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall have been
preserved as a solemn, but important reminder of what took place here almost 80 years ago.
We spent some time here appreciating the city and reflecting on history
before making our way to Hiroshima Station.
Japan has 8 main Shinkansen lines across the country,
which are operated by 5 different companies. These companies make up part of the JR Group,
which operates almost all of the intercity rail services within Japan.
For the next part of our week here, we’d be riding on the San'yō Shinkansen,
which connects the cities of Fukuoka and Osaka. Some trains also have continuing service to Tokyo.
For us, we’d be getting on here at Hiroshima
Station and heading east to spend some time in the cities of Osaka and Kyoto.
Shinkansen tickets can be purchased right at the station, and online too.
Because there were 4 of us though, and we weren’t sure how full the trains might be,
we actually bought our tickets a few days prior at the JR help centre at Narita Airport.
Shinkansen trains have their own dedicated platforms since their routes don’t intersect
with any conventional train lines. That helps them achieve the punctuality that
they’re known for, with an average delay of under a minute in some cases.
With tickets in hand, we got through the gates and made our way up to the platform right away.
One of the many things that Japan excels at are the food options in their train stations,
but we unfortunately didn’t have enough time to grab anything before our train arrived.
Generally you can get yourself a bit more flexibility if you buy a rail pass,
since trains never seem to be more than 10 or 15 minutes apart throughout the day. These
tickets though, were just for this ride in a specific car, so we didn’t want to miss this.
Right on schedule, as expected, was our train for today’s ride to Osaka,
an N700A Series Shinkansen. This train set, F17, was delivered to JR West in 2018,
and these trains are operated on the Tokaido, San’yo, and Kyushu Shinkansen lines.
We’d be sitting in Car number 10 for today’s ride, in one of the “Green Cars”, which has
these bigger seats and assigned seating. My seat for the next little bit was 4D.
I settled into this very comfortable seat right away,
which had tons of space, and this well-positioned window.
In almost no time at all, we were already on the move.
Today’s journey takes us eastbound from Hiroshima, and because this is the Nozomi service,
with very few stops, we’d only be stopping at two stations along the way - Okayama and Shin-Kobe
before arriving into Shin-Osaka. The total distance covered today would be 305 kilometres,
and was expected to take… An hour and 21 minutes. You can do the math from there!
We accelerated away from Hiroshima station,
and then kept going! It’s one thing to see the scenery go by quickly when you’re flying,
but when you are very much still on the ground, that is a brand new sensation entirely!
We quickly entered the first of several tunnels,
and I’ll take that opportunity to look around the interior.
In these, once again, very spacious seats, you have this tray table right in front
that has a bunch of information on the back about the car you’re in,
and where you can find certain things in the adjacent cars as well.
The actual tray table is super large, sturdy, and sits at this very nice height.
There’s a mesh seatback pocket in front, which had these two magazines inside. One looked to
be more travel oriented with a bunch of timetables inside, while the other one
is apparently targeted at businesspeople, and is only placed in these Green cars.
As the scenery outside flew by,
a cabin attendant came by and handed out these wet towels to everybody in the car.
Going back to the rest of the seat, there’s this adjustable
footrest right in front that had a bunch of different positions.
You’ll also find power outlets built right into the armrest,
plus buttons for the reading light and even a seat warmer too.
On the outside armrests is a lever that adjusts the seat recline, which goes quite a ways back,
and built into the headrest is that reading light from before.
If all of that wasn’t enough though,
there’s also this secondary tray table that’s built into the armrest.
We got another fleeting glimpse outside before we made our way into another tunnel,
and I went for a walk around the car.
The Nozomi Shinkansen is made up of 16 cars, with cars 8, 9, and 10 in the middle being Green
Cars. These seat between 64 and 68 passengers, in that very comfortable 2-2 layout. As you can see,
they’re very bright and open, and have these convenient luggage racks above the seats.
The remaining 13 cars are all Ordinary Cars, as JR calls them. These seat between 63 and
100 passengers in a slightly narrower but still pleasant 2-3 layout. The first three cars or
so on Nozomi services have non reserved seating, while the rest do have specific seat assignments.
In total, on these 16-car trains, there’s a maximum capacity of
1,323 passengers - 200 of those being in Green Cars, and 1,123 in Ordinary Cars.
Each car has a slightly different number of seats depending on what they have outside of
the passenger compartment, and in this one between cars 9 and 10 were some washrooms.
In typical Japanese fashion, these were spotless!
There was also a communal sink, and this compartment for storing larger bags.
In between other cars, you’ll also find smoking rooms too.
Back in my seat, I settled in for the rest of the ride and just watched everything go by.
There is free wifi available on these trains, but I stayed glued to the window anyway.
There’s just so much to look at, and the speed of it all still makes it feel very surreal.
We eventually started slowing down as we approached Okayama Station. Okayama
is the second largest city in the Chugoku region after Hiroshima, and this stop was very much the
same as that one. We were stopped for what felt like less than a minute before continuing on.
Now, it’s worth talking about just how much a ride on one of these trains costs.
For the same route between Hiroshima and Osaka, you can find tickets for as low as
10,000 yen in Ordinary cars. For the Green Car though, this cost us
15,000 yen, or $150 Canadian dollars per ticket at the time, which I still think is a good deal.
That said, when a reserved seat in an Ordinary car is almost $50 less, you might as well take
that instead. To go 300 kilometres in an hour and a half for $100 is a great value.
As far as we could tell, there aren’t actually any flights between the two cities,
but even if there were, you can’t deny just how convenient these trains are.
Also, just for confirmation, we were indeed going very fast!
These N700A Series trains have a top speed of 300 km/h. They also have the ability to tilt
up to one degree to maintain speed on slightly “tighter” curves at least by Shinkansen standards.
We soon came to our second stop, at Shin-Kobe Station,
just outside of Osaka, and were back on our way very soon.
Now one thing we did kind of miss out on was getting ourselves bento boxes
beforehand to eat onboard, but there is still a trolley service
that comes through the train with snacks and drinks for purchase.
I grabbed a small bottle of Coke and this Belgian waffle snack for just
a few hundred yen and quickly ate that as we approached Shin-Osaka.
So, that was my first time ever on a Shinkansen, and what a genuinely cool experience it was!
The convenience element of it really is unmatched, and the fact that we were able
to go from entering the station to being on our way in less than 10 minutes is amazing…
I realize that’s how trains work, but I am much more used to the hassle of airports.
Aside from that, just racing through the Japanese countryside at 300 km/h is a
whole new experience of its own. Selfishly, it makes me want Alberta high speed rail even more.
That said, I am hoping that your takeaway from this video is less, “Canadian man
discovers that high speed trains exist”, and more that, “Japan does this phenomenally well”.
I said this before in the single other train video I’ve made,
but I just wish I didn’t have to fly across the world to experience this for myself.
I will absolutely be riding more of these trains the next time I’m in Japan,
and I’m so glad I took the opportunity to ride on a Japanese bullet train.
Once again, this was definitely not my normal subject matter,
but I think this was too cool an experience to pass up. I do hope you enjoyed this special
train video, so thank you very much for watching, and I will see you next time.