TANGERINE TRAVELS DRIVERS

Or to marvel at the train as it wriggled past the epic panoramas of the Sea of Japan/East Sea.

Many passengers did not just purchase tickets to see the sights of the astonishing Shirakami-Sanchi Highlands. Perhaps, it is an answer you could only hear in Japan, but Ootomo was completely right. And, of course, people love all the authentic sounds on board.' 'Life moves too fast and train travel should help capture a special place in time. 'People yearn to travel slowly in Japan,' said JR-East train manager Naoki Ootomo, as our service began its skink-like crawl out of Aomori Station. The train also has a tangerine snub nose on the front inspired by the setting sun. It entered service in March 2006 and is named after a black woodpecker that lives in the Unesco-listed Shirakami-Sanchi Highlands, the world's largest remaining virgin beech forest, through which the train trundles.

Three trains operate on the Gonō Line, with three return services daily, and I was on board 'Kumagera'. The only train to run directly along Japan's coastline, its USP is dealing in a special kind of nostalgia, and my trip on the limited-stop service was a sell-out. Here is old-fashioned Japan, pure and simple, and that's exactly why I came: to travel slow, to not watch the clock.īesides the speed, the Resort Shirakami is unusual for other reasons. There are no dazzling neon-lit Nintendo arcades, Godzilla-sized towers or robot-run hotels. No international airport or shopping mall frenzy. Operator JR-East (East Japan Railway Company) calls the service a 'Joyful Train', and a trip on such a leaden-footed locomotive is like few other sightseeing journeys in the country.įor many Japanese, Tōhoku is a lost world, part of the country that has remained unchanged in the minds of the Tokyo elite. Slow by anyone's standards, it's a train purposely built for travelling tortoise-like from the city of Aomori to Akita, often averaging just 10km/h. This was the first of many peculiarities about my experience on board the Resort Shirakami Train, which crawls along the Gonō Line through Akita Prefecture in northern Honshu's Tōhoku region. When my train finally arrived, however, four minutes later at 08:53, every Japanese passenger on the platform softly applauded.

TANGERINE TRAVELS DRIVERS

Drivers have also been penalised for falling behind schedule. At Tokyo's Shinjuku Station, the world's busiest, officials have been known to issue written apologies, with conductors falling to their knees in atonement if services depart late or even early.

Late by Japanese standards, if only three minutes in real time.Īs absurd as it sounds, such inconvenience can cause outcry in a clockwork-run country like Japan. In Japan, the line between the creative and curious is a fine one, and that morning at 08:49, my train was running late.

Tangerine travels