Regarding the Oct. 9 article "Japan punctuality lets duo go the Guinness 24-hour train distance": I enjoyed reading this article very much as I have been a fan of Japanese railways for 20 years. But I doubt that Corey Pedersen and Mike Kim set a new world record. My own calculation is that the duo covered a distance of 2,819.1 kilometers, not 2,901.4 km:
Kanazawa to Aomori -- 755.8 km
Aomori to Hachinohe -- 96 km
Hachinohe to Tokyo -- 593.1 km
Tokyo to Hakata -- 1.096.1 km
Hakata to Kagoshima -- 278.1 km
A problem with calculating railway distances in Japan is that there are differences in track length on sections served by the Shinkansen as well as conventional trains. Fares are still based on the distances for the old route, and that's why only the kilometers of the old route are published. However, the real distance traveled by Shinkansen trains, which use new, straighter lines, can be found on the Internet -- on the Japanese Wikipedia page about the Shinkansen.
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