Japan: Riding the golden bullet

Japan's high-speed train service is justly famed for efficiency, safety and reliability. Photo / Getty Images

Japan's famous train turns 50 this month but it's still streaks ahead of its class. Joanna Symons joins the birthday party.

Half a century ago on October 1, as visitors flocked to Japan for the Olympic Games, a revolution was taking place. Shinkansen, the bullet train, slid out of Tokyo station bound for Osaka, gathering speeds of up to 209km/h and heralding a new age of high-speed rail.

The Japanese were well ahead of the game. It was 13 years before Italy followed suit, then France with the TGV. But although high-speed trains now glide across hills and plains from Spain to China, Japan's futuristic-looking bullet train retains an aura that our grime-caked intercity expresses can never capture.

Just as we used to stop and stare in wonder when Concorde soared overhead, the bullet train creates a frisson of excitement as it glides into a station - invariably bang on time. And with its long, white, tapered nose, sleek lines, airline-style windows and current speeds of up to 271km/h the Shinkansen fleet has more than a touch of Concorde glamour.

Unlike Concorde, the trains have an almost unblemished safety record. Despite Japan's vulnerability to typhoons and earthquakes, not one of the 10 billion passengers who have used the service since its launch has died as a result of a derailment or collision.

I considered this a comforting statistic as I prepared for a rail tour around central and western Honshu earlier this year, with typhoon warnings flashing across TV screens. Armed with a Japan Rail pass, I'd planned a tour of central and western Honshu, travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto on a combination of bullet train and local rail services.

The capital is a great place to get the measure of Japan. The Edo-Tokyo museum is the best possible introduction to the country's extraordinary history, the Meiji Jingu shrine and Senso-ji temple for spiritual life, while the tea ceremony at Hamarikyu garden, amid the bridges, tidal pools, ducks and cropped pines, is a sliver of old Japan amid the skyscrapers.

I'd loved the city's buzz, the great shops and department stores of Ginza and Harajuku, the wacky fashion, the dogs dressed as Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton in Yoyogi park. But it's a high-octane experience and after a few days I was ready for some zen tranquillity at the next stop, the hot springs resort of Hakone.

Bullet train staff are impeccably dressed and courteous. Photo / Getty Images

Getting there involved a bullet train ride to Odawara from Tokyo's Shimbashi station, a far less daunting prospect for a novice than the main city station. On board, the carriage was like an economy airline cabin - with rows of reclining seats two deep on one side and three on the other - but with a lot more leg room.

The guards, dressed in naval-style uniforms, were charming and helpful. Fellow passengers chatted, or picnicked from their bento boxes. There were no noisy boozed-up football supporters, no businessmen shouting into phones, no spotty teenagers with music leaking from their headphones. Perhaps the only way the Japanese can peacefully coexist in such a crowded country is by showing consideration to others; it certainly makes Japan a very civilised country to explore as a tourist.

The loos were so spotless that I wondered what on earth Japanese tourists made of the facilities on Western railways - they must feel as though they're in a grim medieval re-enactment.

Announcements were, mercifully, in English as well as Japanese, and the only fly in the ointment was the smoking carriage next door which leaked fumes - though you don't get these on all Shinkansen routes.

As the train slipped out of the station, I looked forward to the usual scenes of concrete giving way to suburb and gardens, then fields and countryside - even the odd pagoda or river view perhaps. But the concrete just went on ... and on, and on. Travelling at high speed meant that life outside the window was a bit of a blur, but it was a relentlessly grey blur, interspersed with pylons and the odd flash of colour from washing lines strung on the balconies of apartment blocks.

Happily, Hakone had a more rural aspect. Above the town is a large park area, reached by a switchback train, where a cable car lifts you over sulphurous vents in a former volcano, a rather Disneyfied pirate ship runs mini cruises across a lake, and waterside cafes have footbaths under each table fed by hot springs. Mount Fuji was hiding behind a thick wad of cloud, but it was fun to be among crowds of Japanese families letting off steam in a most orderly way.

Inside the bullet train. Photo / Getty Images

Almost by chance, I happened on the Hakone Open Air Museum, which turned out to be a highlight of the trip: rolling, mountain-backed gardens revealing wonderful sculptures by Rodin, Moore and Miro - as well as a collection of ceramics, paintings and drawings by Picasso.

Back on the bullet train the next day, I was hoping for sea views en route to Nagoya. Instead I got more factories, pylons and concrete. I was beginning to realise what it meant to live in a country where 70 per cent of the land is mountainous, and industry, agriculture and housing have to jostle for elbow room in the remaining 30 per cent. This southern coastal belt provides a sobering glimpse of a landscape apparently without planning regulations.

But the joy of the bullet train is that it whisks you through the less scenic areas, and countryside finally arrived about an hour into the journey from Nagoya to Takayama. I'd switched to the slower Wide View Hida train and as the track began to climb towards the mountains, sprawl gave way to villages and gardens, curly-roofed temples and plunging rocky gorges. Thick bamboo lined the track and beyond it was a hummocky backdrop of spiky forested hills wreathed in mist. Below and beside the train, a river splashed over rocks and under bridges, widening into green pools and sandy bays.

The typhoon finally caught up with me in the small mountain town of Takayama.

But between the gusts and torrents, I was able to wander through streets of 17th and 18th-century wooden houses, buy fruit at the riverside farmers' market and glimpse some of the spectacularly ornate floats used in the great biannual Takayama Festival. Next stop was the attractive city of Kanazawa, site of the Kenrokuen Garden, one of the most beautiful in Japan.

My volunteer guide was well into his 80s, but led me like a gazelle among the stands of high cedars, the cherry and plum groves, the soft, starry maples, moss ponds and little streams and bridges. He showed me the holes in pine trees where resin had been extracted in 1945 during the country's fuel shortage, and pointed out a kite circling overhead.

It was an extraordinarily peaceful place - the only sound the raking of paths and clipping of trees by gardeners in conical hats and the birdsong rising above the high voices of some yellow-capped schoolchildren.

Kyoto, which I reached on the exotically named Thunderbird train, is quite simply one of the loveliest cities in the world.

Unlike Tokyo, it's low-rise, so you can see the surrounding mountains, even among the bright lights and glitzy stores of downtown.

The Zen temples, the parks, the narrow streets of the Gion geisha quarter, the Golden Temple ... all provide a glimpse of old Japan that is utterly beguiling.

And so too is the little town of Nara, an easy day trip by local train from Kyoto, with its monumental and strangely moving bronze Buddha, a park full of very badly behaved deer and two of the most perfect landscapes I'll ever see: the Isuien and Yoshikien gardens, set against a background of dark mountain peaks.

So thank you to the bullet train pioneers. They may have been motivated by a need to link Japan's cities, but they should be given an award for tourism: these great train routes provide the best possible way to explore this extraordinary country.

TOP TIPS

• Travel light. Lugging heavy bags on and off trains is exhausting and storage space on bullet trains is limited. If you do have large cases, it's worth packing an overnight bag and sending your main luggage on ahead.

• Some Shinkansen still have smoking carriages, so be careful not to reserve seats in these unless you want to puff away - and remember that if you fail to reserve seats at busy times, this is where you may end up having to sit.

• When in Rome ... Be polite, not too noisy, and courteous to fellow passengers.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Air New Zealand flies daily to Tokyo from Auckland.

Further information: See japan-guide.com.