Although I’ve managed to ban the Acela from my life, opting to fly between New York City and Washington, D.C., there’s the odd occasion when I have to get on the U.S. rails and join one of the most overpriced, underwhelming experiences in travel.
And in these rare experiences, it’s easy to close the eyes and think of places where rail travel is superb: Switzerland, Austria, in some cases Italy, and of course, Japan, where travel on the Shinkansen, or bullet train, is clean, luxurious by comparison and a much faster way to get where you need to go.
Recently, the country has upped the ante in an incredible way. On May 1, a new luxury service, Shiki-Shima, launched connecting Tokyo Ueno station with Hokkaido. The four-day, three-night journey is inconceivably luxurious, with beautiful observation cars, a Harry Potter-style private platform in Tokyo, as well as the nuance and attention to detail you’d expect at a high-end Japanese hotel.
Source: Skift
