Kon’nichiwa, Hello from Japan, where Erica, Sol and I are traveling at nearly 200 mph on board Shinkansen, the high-speed railroad also known as the bullet train.
Fast and ferociously sleek, it feels modern and state-of-the-art despite its operation since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. These since-updated thoroughbreds gallop the length and breadth of Japan faster than you can fly.
I have loved trains since the Rivera family moved from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to West Babylon, Long Island, in the early 1950s. At night, the far-away whistles on the LIRR as the commuter and freight trains rattled through the Lindenhurst and Wyandanch crossings inspired me to hit the road and see the world.
Making travel adventures come true is one of my happy achievements. As a foreign correspondent and as a tourist, venturing to all corners of the planet, I have managed to fill the bucket list via boats, planes, cars and trains. Now, at twilight, with a head full of travel memories, certain railroads hold a special place.
There have been train rides throughout the ranges of North America and Europe on the Orient Express, which, until 2009, brought luxury passenger rail travel from Paris to Istanbul. South Africa has the Blue Train, which still runs from Pretoria to Cape Town, 990 miles.
It is a magnificent, moving five-star hotel that has carried kings and presidents from safari country to the Cape of Good Hope. While they appreciated the aesthetics, my three daughters, younger then, reported some boredom at being constrained.
To spice up this Japanese journey, I am reading a murder mystery appropriately titled Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. Expecting a high-speed version of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” the trip ended before the book did. Unlike most airline flights, trips on the Shinkansen end too soon, like this vacation.
Even before the train stopped, I was thinking about how Saturday Night Live would have a field day with the debacle involving the highly classified group chat that inadvertently revealed details of an imminent U.S. bombing of Houthi rebel missile sites.
It was not that the humiliated participants exposed were evil or sinister. It is that they were lazy and arrogant, naïve and/or incompetent. Why else would they risk posting a group chat on Signal for such a sensitive discussion?
Even if no one loses their job over it, all concerned will learn from their arrogance.
All aboard.
