Shinkansen

“Welcome to the Shinkansen. This is the Hikari Super Express bound to Shin-Ōsaka.”



After waiting in a single file line outside your car, the doors open and a robotic, yet friendly voice greets you over the speakers as you board this “train.”



Prior to your departure, a small army dressed in pink uniforms has 10 minutes to leave every inch of the interior spotless. When you find your plush seat with a fresh headrest cover in the carpeted car, you immediately appreciate the fruits of their labor. You stare at your watch to confirm if there’s truth to the stories about the timeliness. Sure enough, the doors close, and you pull away from the station at the scheduled time. To the second.



Travel back home has conditioned you to expect music blasting from cell phones. People gabbing on calls.



But there isn’t. And there aren’t.



The skyscrapers of Tokyo begin to fly by, but inside this bullet train all you hear is a soft hum. Across the aisle you see a passenger slowly unpacking his Ekiben (boxed lunch) and utensils. Eating each piece of food quietly. Meticulously packing up the box as if it was some culinary take on origami. The attendant walks down the aisle to collect any trash, bowing as you play your small part to keep the train clean.



Your perception of what public transportation can, and should, be instantly shifts. From the outside, this machine is just cold steel, aluminum alloy, and wheels barreling down the track at great speed. Metal cutting through the air like an arrow. Yet somehow, it takes on a personality of its own. There’s a life to the train, and of course the lives and stories within it. Passengers all heading somewhere for some reason.



This mechanical marvel reflects the engineering prowess and infrastructure of a country, but also serves as a window into the people who live there. A decency, respect, attention to detail, and insistence on quality that each person shows towards something that, ultimately, belongs to all of them.