I Rode the Craziest Trains in Japan

NJB Live (my live-streaming channel): @njblive

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JR East Joyful Trains

JR West Trains

Tom Scott - I rode the world's fastest train.

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Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:38 Shinkansen
02:43 Crazy Fast
03:55 Crazy Pink
05:50 Crazy Nice
08:54 Crazy Recreation Options
10:57 Crazy Decorated
12:21 Crazy ... Stargazing!?
16:14 Getting to the craziest one of all ...
17:31 Crazy Pokémon
20:03 Concluding thoughts
20:40 Ground News

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Corrections
01:36 There have been no fatal crashes, but there have been derailments with no fatalities

[NotJustBikes]

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[LARKXHIN]

"There's no first class on the Hello Kitty Shinkansen"

Hello Kitty, the great class equalizer.

[hwkeyser]

My wife has never clicked on one of your videos for me, but you showed her Pikachu train and now we're discussing a Japan vacation.

[mackaythomson]

hearing about shinkansen travelling faster than planes at 6 minute intervals is absolutely bonkers as somebody who has to wait 30 minutes for a train going 50km/h to get to work

[alasdaresineaeris]

NJB just casually went through like 5 videos worth of content for the average travel vlogger, what a chad move

[BogFiets]

Really need some miffy trains here in the Netherlands

[ljdrpij]

Thank you to coming to Japan. I live in Japan and I think that the craziest train is commuter trains in Tokyo morning.

[docopoper]

As someone in Ireland, this is making me so jealous. I wish we had focused on trains rather than cars.

[emilycerto]

god, the stark contrast in that shot of soul-crushing traffic at the end really did crush my soul after seeing all the creative & innovative trains

[undercoverduck]

"Getting off on the wrong station that also happens to be underserviced" is genuinely a recurring (benign) nightmare for me. Now I can have that nightmare with the added terror of not knowing the native language ❤

[Kromaatikse]

FWIW, Japanese salarymen wouldn't get on the Hello Kitty train by accident - because the Kodama service is among the slowest Shinkansen services, stopping at every station. Business travellers prefer the Nozomi and Hikari services, which go directly between the major cities without stopping at the smaller towns, and they have business-class accommodation to suit. If you're on a Kodama, at several of the stations en route you'll be shunted into a platform to the side, while one of the faster services blasts past on the straight track.

[itsenkaybee]

The missed opportunity of not calling that train "Pika-choochoo"

[mr]

19:34 "you really can't ride this train and not be happy" followed by someone screaming LOL

[MHX]

10:40 fun fact: all hiking trails in Switzerland are planned to have all trail heads located at bus and train stations :)

[Pedantic]

"There *was* a Hello Kitty themed smoking room but it was closed in March 2024"
I never thought I would hear all those words in that exact order. 😂

[yoiko]

I am really happy that you mentioned about the earthquake and tsunami in Kesennuma happened in 2011. As a local, i wish more ppl come to Tohoku area and feel our energy and see how hard we rebuilt our hometown. Pokémon has been contributing, encouraging people and economy here.Thank you for visiting Kesennuma.

[harukahoshizora]

Avid star fan here! I actually went on the space 1375 train last winter with my family, the person who was talking to us actually spoke some English and gave us key astronomy terms. (Although my family includes a fluent Japanese speaking person and the rest can understand at a high level, so mileage will vary) When we got off the station it was a little cloudy, but the guide took us up into the park on the hill you can see the video, he went off for about 10 minutes to turn off the main lights in the park. It was very dark, the only lights you could see were the ones at the station, but if you turned the opposite direction you couldn't see them.
Personally, winter constellations are much more interesting. Even though it was little cloudy we were able to see a little of the Milky Way strip in the sky. Definitely not the darkest place to see stars but definitely a cool experience!
I'm not sure why your experience was so different, maybe because it was so cloudy they didn't see the point?
My only complaints were how cold it was outside (I was not ready for that and was shivering the whole time) and that on the way back they didn't dim the lights in the train and I was so tired at that point...

[KannikCat]

Wow, clearly I was not adventurous enough in my Japan rail travels! I'd say I stuck to the 'boring' regular (fast, on time, frequent, go everywhere, delight to ride, trains, but it didn't even occur to me to look for anything out of the ordinary. I guess I was too stuck in my VIA Rail expectations... :P I just love the idea of fun trains! Where the transportation isn't just an empty space while getting to another thing or place, but instead totally IS part of the experience. Going to have to keep these in mind for my next visit. Thanks! :)

[lemontreemedia]

I went to Japan but I was very little and my mom told me that I used to always say 電車 instead of train until I turned 5. I had a train obsession as a toddler.

[seafog]

I clicked so fast as a Tokyo resident who is always jealous of bicycle lanes in the Netherlands you feature on your videos. I've not heard of most of the trains mentioned here, and now I have a better appreciation for them. Pokémon trains sound perfectly normal in Japan but I really enjoyed seeing it from your pov and finding how ridiculous it actually is. This video also made me realise that being able to travel by train to so many parts of the country is quite impressive too, esp for how prone Japan is to natural disasters and the whole country is mostly covered in mountains. In Europe, a lot of the mountainous or slightly less populated areas are only covered by coaches/buses probably because building roads are easier than building railway tracks. I remembered about the train that was supposed to pass through the mountainous part of Spain (Cantabria) but the project got delayed because they dug the tunnel too narrow so the trains didn't fit 😂