My first trip on the bullet train was zipping from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka and then to Hiroshima. A great experience was my trip to Japan in 1993. An excellent tourist destination. I recommend Japan to anyone as a tourist destination. The language barrier is not a problem – there are plenty of English signs.
When I returned to Japan as a student in 1995, the last of my bullet train trips was into the Japanese mountains.
The class field trip travelled on a spur on the Bullet train to the Yamagata city in Yamagata prefecture.
This bullet train line weaved its way through the mountains and rarely hit any sort of speed. The bullet train was no faster than the ordinary Japanese trains I have taken through the mountains in Japan.
When I asked my Professor of Land Transport when we are heading back from our field trip at an isolated rural train station waiting for the Bullet train, why was the Bullet train to such a remote place, he said that the Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic party always wanted the Bullet train to come to his home district.
Yamagata prefecture has a population of about 1 ½ million. Yamagata city has a population of about a quarter of 1 million. That is smaller than Greater Wellington.
The final station in this spur into Yamagata prefecture has a population of 40,000. Perhaps a Bullet train should come to my suburb in the eastern suburbs of Wellington?
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments