Shinkansen

by Doug

Japan's famous shinkansen service started in the year 1964. The shinkansen is a very high speed train in a JR group. There are no sleeping places on shinkansens. The first line was called the Tokaido shinkansen , because it was a new trunk on the route of Tokaido between Osaka and Tokyo. It takes a couple hours to get from place to place. The maximum speed is 270 kilometers per hour [168 mph]. A lot of times shinkansens have up to 16 cars. They are very safe. Shinkansen in English is bullet train. It used to be 6 hours and 30 minutes to get to Osaka from Tokyo. Now it takes 2 1/2 hours. The construction for the stretch of 392.8 kilometers [244mi] took five years and the cost was 729.0 billion yen (U.S. $2.4 billion). Seeing the Shinkansen go past Mt. Fuji gives Japanese people the feeling of old and new together. In 1971 the construction of two new lines was begun from Omiya in Saitama prefecture north of Niigata northeast to Mariaka. The shinkansen can carry 400 people at one time. I want to go on a shinkansen.

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