If you ever get the chance, please ride the Shinkansen at least once in Japan.
It’s five hours from Tokyo to Hakata, but when you factor in getting to Haneda (or god forbid Narita), checking in, the delays, the unfiltered air inside the plane, it’s actually not that bad.
With trains in Japan, it’s WIWO - walk in, walk out.
And you get to see the full landscape of Japan.

If you ever get the chance, please ride the Shinkansen at least once in Japan.
People talk endlessly about Japanese food, but they tend to skim over Japan’s greatest everyday achievement: its technology.
The Shinkansen's entire design is built to minimise friction: precision tracks, aerodynamic bodies, specialised bodies that keep the train stable even at 300 km/h. Like a plane, it’s usually only travelling at 80% of its potential. The driver adjusts the speed according to the schedule.
Inside a bullet train built for speed, the human is the soft, vulnerable element.
We become “nature,” the reminder that bodies fatigue, age, and sag no matter how advanced the world becomes.

If you ever get the chance, please ride the Shinkansen at least once in Japan.
Fine, do it for the ekiben - I hear some bentos steam shumai and curry with a pull of a string.