The emergence of low-cost carriers (LCCs) has brought airplane ticket prices crashing down and added competition has created a similar price war in the coach and night bus market. There hasn’t been any such push for Japan Rail (JR) to moderate its prices. The Japan Rail Pass, which allo...
gridlines Inside 2 Sorting through the HSR decision factors 12 Under the Alps by fast rail 14 Golden anniversary doesn't slow Japan's silver bullet 22 Tracking HSR in the US and Russia Why high-speed rail? Gridlines is PwC's magazine devoted to infrastructure. Stories focus on four areas:...
21. Technology– Japan is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world and I’m looking forward to getting a sneak peek of the future. Along with the Shinkansen (bullet trains), the country has brought many other innovations into the world, including their famous high-tech ...
Most things in Nagoya are medium sized. The international community is big enough that you will always meet new people from new countries, but not so big that you will end up spending your entire time in Japan without making Japanese friends and learning some 日本語(which would be a real s...
As a tourist it is definitelythe most convenient, reliable, fastest way of discovering Japan. The best part for international tourists is that they can purchase aJapan Rail Passthat will give them unlimited travel for a designated period of time throughout the country!
It turns out that when there’s no snow on the ground, the experience is more than disappointing. Those famous photos you’ve seen of the snow monkeys that depict a gorgeous snowscape in the wilds of Japan? Well, when we were there, it looked more like a pile of rocks surrounding an...
The minibuses that arrive don’t always stop exactly at the same spot, so when it’s crowded it is sometimes a comical process of running 20 feet in one direction, only to get stymied and run 20 feet back in the other. This time during this process, a man in the crowd somewhat befr...
Although some might think two months is a long time to spend somewhere, it’s not. I suspect I could spend a lifetime discovering Tokyo alone, let alone Japan as a country. This is simply my impression of the place given my time here, and some of the “dealbreakers” that mean Japan...
And the Detroit Airport Marriott is supposedly a full service hotel. What’s the point of a full service hotel if it doesn’t offer amenities that guests are uniquely likely to need when they arrive? My point isn’t to rail against this specific hotel. I’ve seen i...
Aside from the near-universality of turbocharging, I think the other factor in the efficiency of modern turbodiesel engines is the adoption of “common rail” injection at extremely high pressure, which as I understand it promotes more rapid atomization to compensate for diesel fue...