The above picture – taken at a laundromat at about 6:30 this morning – is a good depiction of our energy levels after several very busy days. Today therefore, would be ‘low impact’.
That meant going to SCMAGLEV, the JR rail train museum! This is a museum with a variety of Japanese trains on exhibit, and you can walk through many of them to explore the insides as well.
Much of the focus of the museum is Shinkansen (bullet trains) – Japan is rightly very proud of their triumph of engineering – but they have other trains as well and right now have a steam train exhibit.
The fact they apparently rotate out these trains every now and then is impressive since it wasn’t at all obvious how they’d get them in or out (some weigh over 100 tonnes). It’s likely the entire back wall can be opened to roll them in, but that functionality is well hidden!
In the above photo we’re standing in front of the actual lead car of the first bullet train, which carried its first passengers in 1964. We watched a video about the development process and it’s incredible viewed from today’s perspective that the entire technology (trains, tracks, signaling etc) was developed in only five years!
The above is a photo of some of the English explanations of the displays. There was a vast amount of material – including hands on demonstrations – about bullet train technology, almost none of which I knew. For instance information about max speed limits is transmitted to the trains through the tracks, or the carriages automatically become airtight when trains enter tunnels to avoid pressure waves from discomforting riders, or that the rails are made from welded segments that are 1.5 kilometers in length! I was very impressed by the scientific detail in the exhibits, which were well written to make them understandable without sacrificing complexity.
Cutely, the cafe at the museum is a ‘Delica Station’, which is one of the stores you buy bento from at Japanese rail stations. Kristin got the ‘Doctor Yellow meal’ because it came with a free trading card of Doctor Yellow, the famous yellow Shinkansen.
They even had an older Doctor Yellow on display! These famous trains are diagnostic and travel the rails at night to do tests and check for needed repairs. Since they rarely run during the day they’re not often seen and amongst Japanese rail enthusiasts it’s considered lucky to see a Doctor Yellow working the rails.
That’s a photo from the ‘diorama room’ where a detailed diorama of the entire Tokaido Shinkansen line – from Tokyo to Osaka – was on display. As you can see it was an insane amount of detail, with most of the more famous landmarks reproduced in tiny scale.
The above train was in the entry hall, and was one of the first things you see. At first I thought it was a prototype but it’s actually a maglev train! Magnetic levitation trains have been undergoing R&D in Japan for years now with the hope of one day using them to carry passengers at speeds that make even bullet trains seem slow. In fact the speed record for a train – 603 km/hr – was achieved by one like this back in 2015. The museum had a wonderful maglev section with very clever demonstrations and a simulator of sorts where you sat inside a car and experienced what maglev travel may one day be like.
Moving on from the trains, we were amused and amazed to note today that many of the Christmas decorations are gone and replaced with elaborate new years decorations! I was told once it is ‘very important’ in Japan to remove decorations as soon as possible after a holiday and today we saw evidence of this.
Today was our last day in Nagoya, and tomorrow we head to a hot spring for a few days. The timing is perfect since we’re both very tired and I’m a bit sick. Let’s hope the mineral baths heal us back to the stamina level we’ll need when we return to Tokyo around new years!