Watching Japan tear by..

Travelling in bullet trains - those sleek white tubes - quickly become a way of life when you live in Japan. They are the quickest way to get from A to B, without grimy nails or ruffled hair. Sitting in a 'shinkansen' (bullet train) as the train silently tears through the gut of Japan, ranks high on my list of quintessentially Japanese experiences - up with kimonos and sushi.

It all starts at the platform where digital boards flash train schedules of the three services - 'Nozomi', Hikari or Kodama. Time is gospel of course. You know you have no buffers.You get in quickly and sink into one of the soft spacious seats, cut off from all outside sounds...


..I come from a country where train travel always meant an assault of unsynchronised sounds - tea/coffee (depending on which part of the country the train is in) sellers shouting and clanking cups ,lustily bargaining coolies(porters) in red, relatives seeing off their dear ones- getting as excited about the journey as the ones departing....an unentangleable morass of sounds merrily clashing into each other. Such is the fanfare surrounding train departures (and arrivals) in India....


Here...the bullet rain leaves on the dot - silently - without warning (if you cant keep time, why live). Coldly efficient and downright unemotional. Inside, methodical announcements start - in polite Japanese from a thin Japanese female voice- rolling out oh-so-Japanese names of cities - Shin-Yokohama, Nagoya, Shin-Kobe, Osaka,Kyoto - all rattled off with exact times of arrival - you can set your watches to them. As it pulls out with an inaudible rumble, passengers around open their bentos (food in packed boxes) and gently prod their chopsticks into rice and fish breakfasts.. A business man/executive across the aisle taps softly at his sleek laptop.The train purrs on. Business is as usual.

I look out of the expansive glass window and watch Japan tear by - 'on mute' . It is beautiful. Lush never ending mountains ('yama' in Japanese) green in summer and who knows what fantastic shades in autumn and spring. But there is one more thing that never leaves you. The crushing sight of human habitation. Miles and never ending miles of box houses meshed with overhead poles and cables.Spread like a carpet in Japan's scenic countryside (what once might have been untouched). I take note. From Kobe to Tokyo ( about 3 hours) there is virtually no respite- never once - from houses, factories or pachinko (slot machines)parlours. This is the island of Honshu - one of Japans most densely populated and industrial regions.

If you think etiquette can be done away with on a train, think again. Not in Japan. Not on a shinkansen. Girls in uniforms, with the polish of air stewardesses push snack carts ( gentle voices reminding us of the "nomi-mono" - drinks -and "sandowicho" on sale). Ticket collectors quitely enter to check. All follow an invisible script - enter carriage quietly, mutter a string of words (an apology?) , full bow and on with their jobs.


Everything must have a way.