So here I am, snogging this stunning, tiny little Japanese girl on the bonnet of her sports car. This was DEFINITELY the best ride I’ve ever had, in a long life on hitch-hiking. But, it was too cold and dark to continue, and seriously the traffic in Japan makes tectonic plate movement look fast, so it was time to experience that great Japanese marvel, the shinkansen.
Literally, `shinkansen` means `new trunk line`; a typically staid and boring name, but one which inspires a certain amount of reverence. It’s better known to the rest of the world, as the bullet train.
It’s when I’m waiting for a train or a bus, that I wish I still smoked, so I could use that downtime constructively. Platform 1, at Nakatsugawa, waiting for the bullet train. I had that sort of nervous anticipation, like when you’re about to have sex with a girl for the first time, or when you’re about to go for a curry, or you’re about to watch Requiem for a Dream.
Liam was sorting out my hotel reservation on the other end of the phone. “What time do you arrive?” he asked me. “With time to spare of course,” I replied, cleverly coining the shinkansen slogan. Well, I thought it was clever. Liam: “What?” “10:30.”
I can hear Liam’s muffled conversation in the background to the hotel manager: “His SHINKANSEN arrives at 10:30.” Good work Liam: he stressed the word `shinkansen`. I could feel the manager being cowed with awe. That’s right mate. Polish your crystalware, bring out your best silver, and be on your best behaviour. I’m coming in on the SHINKANSEN.
The shinkansen. Both Helen and April want to shag a shinkansen driver. Their shag-status is right up there with commercial pilots. And the amount of shinkansen stuff that April got for Christmas! Towels, chocolates, clocks.
When a bullet train boots past your station with such noise and velocity and calm ferocity, all conversations end for the 10 seconds until it passes, all heads cocked, eyebrows raised, eyes raised foolishly. All the lesser trains cower to the gutter as the great chariot roars past. Being nearby is like being inside a heartbeat, that has been slowed so that it lasts for ten seconds, and amplified. It’s like a giant stretched out throb.
Funny the current technology being developed isn’t to make the shinkansen faster, but in fact to make it quieter. Funny the way the world works in such unpredictable ways. It`s like magnets. Who could ever have predicted that magnets would exist?
Anyway…
We hold the shinkansen in such high regard that we don’t even shorten it’s name like with do with `the `Ko`, or `the Fooj“. And I mean it is a name that deserves to be shortened. It`s quite unwieldy.
So a freight train rattles in and stops at Nakatsugawa Platform 1. You know the ones: carrying coal, all big chunky and iron, covered in graffiti. Except being Japan it wasn`t covered in graffiti. But you know the ones. Always the witty one, I shouldered my pack, and said to the guy next to me, “Where do I get on?” Given that he spoke no English though, my humour was wasted on him.
The engine started, and like falling dominoes, the hooks latched, and heaved the crushing weight of the freight train on it’s way.
As it turns out, I wasn’t even catching the shinkansen from here, I first had to get onto a mortal train, which would take me to Nagoya. So most of my trip wouldn`t even be by shinkansen. Pretty annoying. But not really relevant to this story.
If you can even call it a story. It’s more just an excuse to boast that I got to snog a j-girl on the bonnet of her sports car.