An era has come to an end in Japan: the “0-Series” Bullet Train, first launched back in 1964, has made its last run as the venerable series is officially brought out of service. It was during Japan’s heady postwar growth period that the government made a proposal to build a high-speed train line to handle the increasing passenger load on the Tokaido Line between Tokyo and Osaka, and slowly things got under way. With the impending Tokyo Olympics only a few years off, the project was kicked into high gear so that the line would be opened in time for foreign visitors to oo and ah over. It was a big success, and the speedy trains helped improve Japan’s international image like no other symbol of the postwar period. The 0-Series is considered the Mother of the Bullet Train by rail fans, and all told they’ve traveled enough miles to circumnavigate the globe 30,000 times — wow! Tickets on the last 0-series were snapped up in record time by train otaku who wanted to be present on that last journey, and as the train pulled out, hundreds of fans were there with cameras to record the moment. During my years as an ESL teacher I had many students who loved train more than anything, and after school vacations they’d have all kinds of interesting stories for me about taking a long trip to some rural corner of the country to ride their favorite train.
