Snapshots from Shinkansen
It’s difficult to decide whether Japanese trains are the easiest or most complicated public transport system you have ever tried to navigate. As you lean back on a plush seat in the Shinkansen, you are relieved to hear the English announcement that follows the Japanese: the calm voice lists your destination. Somehow, you made it to the right place.
It’s difficult to decide whether Japanese trains are the easiest or most complicated public transport system you have ever tried to navigate. As you lean back on a plush seat in the Shinkansen, you are relieved to hear the English announcement that follows the Japanese: the calm voice lists your destination. Somehow, you made it to the right place.
You’ve heard stories of the Shinkansen. It’s one of the many fantastical elements of Japanese life that has snuck into the Western consciousness. These marvellous bullet trains, travelling at more than 350 kilometres per hour, shooting across the country more quickly than seems possible. Still, here you are, and the train is beginning to move.
The Shinkansen rolls along smoothly, and the scenery rolls along with it. Other than the luxurious seats and ample leg room, it feels remarkably similar to the subways that you have been catching all over Tokyo. It’s slower than you were expecting. Unimpressed by the train, you focus your attention on the passing houses.
There is a peculiar fusion of traditionally Japanese and modern European-inspired architecture lining the train tracks. Many of the apartment buildings remind you of home. Your familiar infiltrates the unfamiliar, softening the culture shock, and causing guilt to churn in your stomach. It’s not difficult to guess why your everyday is imprinted on this distant land.
After two briefs stops on the outskirts of Tokyo, the Shinkansen picks up speed. The houses begin to blur around the edges, and the train’s steady rumble becomes a roar. The carriage shifts gently back and forth as it’s propelled forwards, rocking like a boat. A train appears alongside you, running parallel, heading West as you are. Just as quickly, that train is left behind. The Shinkansen rushes onward.
Suddenly everything turns to darkness, the houses that lined the tracks replaced by the indiscernible walls of a tunnel. You are given a moment to reflect on the hundreds of lives you glimpsed as you passed by, a moment to consider where you are going, before the day greets you again. Since entering the tunnel, the houses have become less dense, with fields and farmland filling the gaps between them. Then, another tunnel.
Like this, the Japanese scenery is given to you in a series of snapshots as the Shinkansen streaks by. Cloud-covered mountain ranges across the horizon. A tiny bridge across a narrow valley that’s filled with houses that look as though they slid down from the terraced hills. A cemetery, with ornate headstones circling a building with a peaked roof and intricately decorated gables. Power lines twisting in strange patterns alongside the train, seeming to dance with one another to a melody that you can’t hear. A wider bridge across what should be an expanse of water, but which holds only puddles and gravel leading out towards the sea. An occasional symbol thrust above the other buildings that you recognise, like a giant letter ‘M’, or a bowling pin, or the logo for a car dealership that you forgot sold vehicles outside your own country.
The cars out here are wider than they were in Tokyo. In the city centre, even the trucks seemed squashed to fit into the narrow streets between the pedestrians and cyclists. The back streets were mostly filled with bicycles and mopeds, with riders moving so slowly that they could chat with one another as they paused at intersections. That lazy pace feels like another world now.
One wide van is parked on the side of a dirt track, which is winding its way through a yellowing farm. Near the van, a person stands, pointing a long-range lens in the direction of the Shinkansen. You wonder if the person is trying to catch a photo of the train before it disappears, or if your presence is spoiling a beautiful photograph of the autumn colours on the other side of the tracks.
The hills are bursting with an autumn unfamiliar to you. These flaming yellows, oranges, and reds contrast starkly with the native trees that stay lush and green throughout the year in the suburbs you call home. These autumnal fires are interspersed between actual fires, which spiral smoke into the already smoggy air. These white clouds share the sky with the grey plumes that billow from factory chimneys. The air reminds you of the smoking chambers between the carriages, with people squeezed into glass rooms and haze pressed against the panes. The smog places a barrier between you and these people, just as it pushes the faded buildings and mountains closer to the horizon.
Occasionally you pass through train stations. You are certain there are passengers sitting there, patiently waiting for their trains, but they are just smudges of black and grey on a pale landscape, and then they are gone. You are barely given time to consider who they are or where they might be going.
Another Shinkansen passes yours. Perhaps this is the train that those possible people are patiently waiting for. If you stare straight ahead at the white-and-blue-striped carriages, the train seems to become slightly translucent, the shapes of the landscape visible through the blur of windows.
A stone well, like the wishing wells you saw in the gardens at Tokyo. A single wind turbine rotating slowly. A baseball field. Rows and rows of solar panels. A student running laps around a school oval. A church that looks like it came from a European history book, suddenly causing you to forget where you are.
A man walks up the aisle between the seats, making a sucking sound between his teeth as he passes each row. He holds out his hand, expecting tickets, speaking words you don’t understand. You rummage in your pockets, find the ticket, offer it to him. He punches a hole in the thick card and returns it to you. ‘Thank you,’ you say. Then, ‘Arigato’. The syllables still stumble as they cross your tongue. He nods at you and carries on.
Occasionally there are English words interrupting the banners and signs of Japanese out the window. These words stand out to you, the same way you stood out as you walked the streets of Tokyo. A young boy walks the aisle of the Shinkansen, holding the hand of his younger sibling; they are both staring at you.
The train rockets through another tunnel.