[Image: Joy Tajonera / Facebook]
Hidden inside its train station lies one of Japan’s most intriguing sights that thrills rail enthusiasts 17 times a day and always draws a crowd at the platform.
First, one of Japan’s iconic bullet trains, the teal green Tohoku Shinkansen “Hayabusa”, arrives at the platform. After passengers disembark, the train patiently waits for its partner. Then, the bright red Akita Shinkansen “Komachi” slowly approaches on the same track.
Finally, to the delight of onlookers, the two trains connect nose-to-nose in what is known to locals as the “Shinkansen kiss.”
Technically, the procedure is called coupling (which also sounds about right), but for Japanese rail fans, it’s much more than that, and several locals return more than once a day to see the trains kiss. For foreigners, it is a unique insight into the quintessentially Japanese experience of trainspotting.
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“It is the iconic image of the two Shinkansen being connected at the noses,” Carissa Loh, a rail enthusiast from Singapore who has returned five times for the spectacle, tells CNN.
The Japanese are proud of their sleek, spaceship-like Shinkansen, known worldwide as “bullet trains.” They are famously fast, reliable and beautifully designed.
Every month, timetables for all the trains are published in “a very thick book,” and hobbyists “will look at it to see where they should go to take a specific photo or to ride a specific train.”
Loh explains that Japanese rail fans are divided into two main categories: nori-tetsu — “people who like to ride trains” — and tori-tetsu — “people who like to take photos of trains.”
“A lot of little boys, when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they will say they want to be a Shinkansen driver,” says Loh.
Hopefully, a few girls want to be Shinkansen drivers too.
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There are three stations in Japan where you can witness the kissing of two Shinkansen trains, Morioka along with Sendai and Fukushima. But Morioka is the only place where you can witness the colourful kiss between the Tohoku and the Akita.
[Source: CNN]
