They're sleek and fast and coming to Taiwan, but paying for them can be a problem.
Shinkansen or "bullet trains" have been shuttling World Cup fans throughout the length and breadth of Japan and a variant of the train is expected to be used in Taiwan on the north-south high-speed railway, in October 2005.
They offer comfort, good food, great service and even movies. They travel at speeds of up to 300kph and are the best way to travel if you don't want to fly, but are nearly as expensive.
A train from Osaka to Tokyo, a distance of around 550km, costs around ?13,500 (NT$4,322), whereas a JAS flight costs ?15,900 for the one-way leg of a return journey between the two cities.
The 345km rail link between Taipei and Kaohsiung is estimated to cost NT$450 billion and is not only Taiwan's first build-operate-transfer (BOT) project, it's also the world's biggest BOT venture.
Additionally, the government may have to cough up US$800 million if it loses a civil lawsuit filed by the Alstom-Siemens Eurotrain consortium against Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), which awarded the contract to the Taiwan Shinkansen Consortium, even though it had earlier named Eurotrain as its "preferred bidder."
Japan's Mitsui Corp, which is behind the Taiwan Shinkansen Consortium, is being cagey about the whole matter because of the ongoing court action.
The general manager of the Shinkansen project in Taiwan, Tofhihiko Nagao, said yesterday, "It's a bad situation right now because the contract [with Taiwan] has only recently been signed.
"There have been problems with the competition and, really, we can say no more because we have a confidentiality agreement with the THSRC," Nagao said.
"All I can say, is that our option is most suitable for Taiwan. That's it."
The need for confidentiality is understandable, but also bizarre. The Taipei Times was sent to eight separate offices in Osaka yesterday for an interview about Shinkansen and was referred three times on the phone.
It was not allowed to photograph the operations center at Osaka Train Station and was charged to view the trains on the platform.
"Yes, it is true, Shinkansen is just like a secret society," said the woman at the information center at the train station, who immediately regretted what she had said and asked not to be named.
So what will Taiwan get for all the money it will cost?
It can be confirmed that the trains do run on time. They are highly reliable and there are only three reports of serious incidents: A derailment at low speed in 1973 in Osaka, an emergency stop in 1976 because of faulty wiring and the death of a 17-year-old at Mishima station after being dragged along the platform in 1995.
The trains are beautifully built and the carriages come in single-and double-decker versions. The front of the train has a cusp-nosed design which minimizes noise. You do not hear them coming -- they just whoosh by.
Proposed in 1956, the first bullet-train service between Tokyo and Osaka started in 1964. By 1989, 2.75 billion passengers had used Shinkansen trains and unofficial estimates from the press office put the number of passengers as high as 10 billion today.
Average speeds of 261kph have been recorded with one bullet train clocked at a top speed of 552kph in 1999.
As for World Cup traffic, Mr. Kitade at the Shinkansen press office in Tokyo said it was business as usual. "We have laid on a few special trains and extra information, but not much more.
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