Japan by local train, not bullet train

The Shinkansen has done something remarkable to Japanese travel: it has made the distance between major cities almost irrelevant. It has also made everything between them invisible.

The Gonō Line, running along the Sea of Japan coast through Aomori and Akita, is the corrective. Two and a half hours of grey water, fishing hamlets and wind-bent pines, on a train with seats angled towards the windows.

In central Honshu, the Iida Line takes six hours to cover 195 kilometres and stops at ninety-four stations, several of which cannot be reached by road at all. The Hisatsu Line in Kyushu climbs a switchback through cedar forest to a station that has not changed since 1909.

A rail pass makes this practical, but the calculation has shifted since the price increases; regional passes now usually beat the national one unless you are covering the full length of the country.

The reward for the slower option is a Japan that operates at village scale: a stationmaster who is also the ticket clerk and the gardener, vending machines on empty platforms, and the specific pleasure of getting off somewhere you had no plan to visit.