A boy in a baseball cap at the front of a line hopped on to a Nozomi shinkansen train just as the last male passenger in a suit got off. In the evening of Aug. 9, the bullet train bound for Hakata, Fukuoka Prefecture, departed Nagoya Station nearly full.
It was a Friday just before the start of the Bon summer holidays, and the Tokaido Shinkansen line, which marked the 60th anniversary of its operations this month, saw a record 483 bullet train trips in a single day. The number means one train departed from the starting stations of Tokyo and Shin-Osaka every two minutes on average.
“It was a milestone,” said Central Japan Railway President Shunsuke Niwa, noting that the operation of the Tokaido Shinkansen is comparable to that of regular commuter trains in terms of frequency of services.
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