It's been a long time coming and was almost derailed by budget wrangling in the 1980s, but after more than four decades of planning and construction, the Hokkaido Shinkansen Line, which runs between Shin-Aomori and Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto, Hokkaido, and slices the travel time from Tokyo to Hokkaido by 53 minutes, is now in operation.
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