Seeing a bullet train arrive at the station for the first time is an experience you can’t be prepared for. It doesn’t chug in. It doesn’t come to a squealing halt. It arrives like something moving at 198 miles per hour should, utterly and completely unconcerned that it just crossed half of Japan.
I was on the platform at Shinagawa Station, and I knew right away why the shinkansen has its own mythology. It wasn’t just any train. It’s a statement.
What the shinkansen actually is
The shinkansen, or “new trunk line” in Japanese, is Japan’s high-speed rail network and the Tokyo-to-Hiroshima route is one of its longest and most traveled. The Nozomi train, the fastest shinkansen service, connects the two cities, which are about 315 miles apart in less than four hours without any transfers. That’s approximately the distance from San Antonio to Dallas, for comparison, at the speed of a commercial aircraft cruising at altitude from a seat with more legroom than most economy flights.
The shinkansen has been running since 1964 and has an amazing safety record: no fatal accidents in over 60 years of operation. Trains run with an average delay of less than one minute. In a country where punctuality is as much a cultural value as it is a logistical one, the shinkansen is a point of national pride.
The ride itself
Our group boarded together, but once we were seated, the train ride was less like a group outing and more like a personal experience. I sat down next to my friend Faith, and the first thing I noticed was the space with comfortable seats and real legroom, the kind that makes you realize just how much you’ve been putting up with in every other form of transit. There was a power outlet by the window seat.
Faith immediately whipped out her phone and complained about the Wi-Fi, which felt like the only thing to complain about on a perfect ride. Outside the window, Japan flashed by at a speed that’s really hard to process, cities blurring into the countryside, mountains appearing and disappearing, the occasional glimpse of fields stretching flat between hills. If the weather is clear and you are sitting in on the right side of the train, you may be able to see Mount Fuji after about 44 minutes from Shinagawa Station. The window seat is worth the battle.
I eventually drifted off to sleep. There was something in this thing. I was on a train going over 100 miles per hour through the Japanese countryside, and it was so soothing that my body just… decided to take a nap. No turbulence. No jarring stops. No overhead announcements every ten minutes. Just the soft hum of something designed to the point of invisibility. I woke up a little ashamed and perfectly rested, a little closer to Hiroshima.
What America is missing
There is a certain frustration that comes around halfway through a shinkansen trip, and it is directed solely at home. In the U.S., there’s Amtrak. When compared with the shinkansen experience, Amtrak doesn’t look good. A four-hour train ride for 500 miles that is relatively inexpensive, dependable, comfortable and faster than flying city-center to city-center in America? That’s a country that has made a fundamentally different set of choices about how people should move through it.
Riding the shinkansen as an American isn’t just a travel experience. It’s a gentle political awakening.
The destination waiting at the end
Hiroshima Station comes and goes without much fanfare, which seems appropriate for a city with as much history as this one. It takes a 15-minute streetcar ride from the station to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Atomic Bomb Dome, a jarring but essential transition from the slick modernity of the shinkansen to one of the most important historical sites in the world. The contrast of how you arrive versus what you arrive to is part of the experience.
Arriving in Hiroshima and leaving the station, I instantly realized how different this city was from Tokyo. There are a lot less people and in my opinion, slightly less lively although it was very beautiful around the river.
Four hours well spent
By the time we rolled into Hiroshima, I had charged my phone, seen more of the Japanese countryside than I could have seen any other way and had a nap. Faith still hadn’t forgiven the wifi. But she couldn’t really complain. Berkelee had also handed out candy to the group which was a sweet way to end the ride.
The shinkansen is one of those rare travel experiences that lives up to the hype, and then quietly exceeds it. It’s not exciting the way turbulence is exciting, or memorable the way a delayed flight is memorable.
Its memorability comes from being effective. All the time. Perfectly. I understood what it meant when I stood on that platform watching it pull in. Four hours later arriving in Hiroshima, I understood the rest.
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