In my last post, I talked about a possible journey around Japan, sticking as close to the coast as possible. This ends up taking around 28 days, which is more than most people can dedicate to silly train adventures.

What about if you only have one day? What’s the furthest you could get? This is a question that’s played on my mind a lot longer than the circumnavigation one, and the answer is in the process of changing.

Shinkansen

The Shinkansen network started between Tokyo and Osaka, but now extends from there west to Hakata, south to Kagoshima, and north to Hokkaido, with branches to Tsuruga (via Nagano), Niigata, Shinjo, and Akita, as well as an independent stretch in Western Kyushu (which is supposed to connect up to the north-south Kyushu Shinkansen, but construction of that stretch is blocked by Saga Prefecture). Of these, the route from Kagoshima via Tokyo to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto is the longest and arguably the “main” through route.

So, can we go from Kagoshima-Chuo to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto in a day? Yes, easily! Here are some possible itineraries:

Service name Departure station Arrival station   Depart Arrive   Depart Arrive   Depart Arrive   Depart Arrive
Mizuho 600/602/604/606 Kagoshima-Chuo Shin-Osaka   06:35 10:21   07:32 11:21   08:32 12:21   10:32 14:21
Nozomi 10/90/92/96 Shin-Osaka Tokyo   10:30 12:57   11:30 13:57   12:30 14:57   14:30 16:57
Hayabusa 23/25/29/35 Tokyo Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto   13:20 17:47   14:20 18:29   15:20 19:44   17:20 21:44

The fastest route would be the 07:32 departure, since that lets you catch the Hayabusa 25 service. Total time requirement is then 12 hours, 57 minutes.

If speed were slightly less of a concern and you wanted to experience the more comfortable Kyushu-exclusive 800-series Shinkansen, you could also take the Sakura 400 (departing 06:04), or any Tsubame service, and change in Hakata for the Nozomi instead of Shin-Osaka.

Major Cities

OK, so restricting ourselves to just Shinkansen destinations is easy mode. What about if we pick any major cities? Kagoshima is already about as far south as you can get, but can we get further north in Hokkaido? At worst, can we get to Sapporo, the fifth-largest city in Japan and largest city in Hokkaido?

Absolutely: either of the earlier two services above will let you connect to the Hokuto limited express to Sapporo. (Strangely, the speed you gained from the later departure on the Hayabusa is eaten up on this leg, leaving them an hour apart again.)

What about Asahikawa, Hokkaido’s second city? This is still possible, although now we are limited to one route per day.

Service name Departure station Arrival station   Depart Arrive   Depart Arrive
Hokuto 19/21 Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Sapporo   18:14 21:41   19:01 22:41
Kamui 45 Sapporo Asahikawa   22:00 23:25   — —

End to end, you’d need 16 hours 50 minutes.

Top to bottom

At this point, we’re almost reaching the northern- and southernmost stations in Japan. Could we stretch this to go from southernmost to northernmost station?

Nishi-Oyama station is the southernmost station in Japan1. The first service of the day is at 05:53, and from there, the earliest you can get into Kagoshima-Chuo is 07:28. You miss the first departure, so can’t even get as far as Asahikawa, let alone Wakkanai, the northernmost station in Japan.

But these limits are in the process of changing. Currently, the second leg of the Hokkaido Shinkansen is under construction between Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto and Sapporo. This was supposed to be completed by 2030, but has now been delayed to around 20382, similarly to the Chuo Shinkansen. The final travel times are unknown, but JR has committed to a maximum travel time between Tokyo and Sapporo of 5 hours 1 minute. Assuming that departure times from Tokyo are unchanged, then the earliest departure from Kagoshima would let us get to Asahikawa at 19:55, and make the connection to the Sarobetsu to Wakkanai, but we have no way of making it to Kagoshima from Nishi-Oyama in time. Conversely, leaving on the second departure, we can make it from Nishi-Oyama, but we miss the connection to Wakkanai.

Service name Departure station Arrival station   Depart Arrive   Depart Arrive
(Local train) Nishi-Oyama Yamakawa   — —   05:53 06:05
(Local train) Yamakawa Kagoshima-Chuo   — —   06:11 07:28
Mizuho 600/602 Kagoshima-Chuo Shin-Osaka   06:35 10:21   07:32 11:21
Nozomi 10/90 Shin-Osaka Tokyo   10:30 12:57   11:30 13:57
Hayabusa 23/25 Tokyo Sapporo   13:20 18:21   14:20 19:21
Kamui 37/41 Sapporo Asahikawa   18:30 19:55   20:00 21:25
Sarobetsu 3 Asahikawa Wakkanai   20:06 23:47   — —

That said, the Hokkaido Shinkansen isn’t the only high-speed rail line under construction in Japan. The Chuo Shinkansen, the ultra-high-speed maglev service, is currently under construction between Shinagawa and Nagoya, with plans to build it out to Shin-Osaka. Could that help us?

It’s not clear whether the first leg would be helpful. Currently the travel time between Nagoya and Tokyo is 97 minutes; the projected travel time on the Chuo Shinkansen is 40 minutes. However, the Chuo Shinkansen doesn’t go all the way to Tokyo Station; to save on the most expensive construction costs of tunnelling through central Tokyo, the route stops short in Shinagawa. So to understand how much time is saved, you need to take into account two changes of train, at Nagoya and Shinagawa, and an extra local train from Shinagawa to Tokyo.

No preliminary timetables have been published for the Chuo Shinkansen, but let’s make the most optimistic assumption, that one departs from Nagoya 4 minutes after we arrive, giving us just enough time to make the connection. 40 minutes later, we alight in Shinagawa, allow at least 4 minutes to transfer, meaning the next departure we can make is the 13:30, getting us into Tokyo at 13:37.

The next Hayabusa departure is 13:44, but this only goes to Shin-Aomori; the next departure to Hokkaido is the same 14:20 as we would have taken anyway! Sadly, we’ve added a lot of complexity, but saved no time.

Service name Departure station Arrival station   Depart Arrive
(Local train) Nishi-Oyama Yamakawa   05:53 06:05
(Local train) Yamakawa Kagoshima-Chuo   06:11 07:28
Mizuho 602 Kagoshima-Chuo Shin-Osaka   07:32 11:21
Nozomi 90 Shin-Osaka Nagoya   11:30 12:20
(Chuo Shinkansen) Nagoya Shinagawa   12:44 13:24
(Local train) Shinagawa Tokyo   13:30 13:37
Hayabusa 25 Tokyo Sapporo   14:20 19:21
Kamui 45 Sapporo Asahikawa   20:00 21:25
Sarobetsu Asahikawa Wakkanai   — —

When3 the second leg of the Chuo Shinkansen opens to Shin-Osaka (originally scheduled for 2045, then brought forward to mid-2030s, but now not even discussed and almost certainly pushed back again given construction delays on the first leg, and that environmental approvals haven’t even started for the second leg yet), the travel time Shin-Osaka to Tokyo is due to be reduced from the current 2 hours 27 minutes to just 67 minutes. While the stopping patterns aren’t confirmed yet (only the non-stop services are likely to get that journey time, with the services calling at the intermediary prefectural stations taking longer), and only a handful of trains are planned to run each hour4, we should still surely see some speedup from this.

In the absence of a timetable, let’s assume that the new service will depart Shin-Osaka at the same time the Nozomi currently does. We arrive at Shinagawa at 12:37, allow for a few-minute transfer, and arrive in Tokyo at 12:48, allowing us onto Hayabusa 23—the same service we would have been on had we taken the hour earlier departure from Kagoshima, and letting us make our connection in Asahikawa!

It’s an early start and a late finish, but less than 18 hours, and you can reasonably expect to get a night of sleep before and after (certainly better than if you want to take an early Eurostar and you’re travelling from outside London).

Service name Departure station Arrival station   Depart Arrive
(Local train) Nishi-Oyama Yamakawa   05:53 06:05
(Local train) Yamakawa Kagoshima-Chuo   06:11 07:28
Mizuho 602 Kagoshima-Chuo Shin-Osaka   07:32 11:21
(Chuo Shinkansen) Shin-Osaka Shinagawa   11:30 12:37
(Local train) Shinagawa Tokyo   12:41 12:48
Hayabusa 23 Tokyo Sapporo   13:20 18:21
Kamui 45 Sapporo Asahikawa   20:00 21:25
Sarobetsu 3 Asahikawa Wakkanai   20:06 23:47

Conclusions

Riding the full length of the core Shinkansen route from Kagoshima to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto is not only possible today, but has many options available, and is definitely worth a try. Going from Kagoshima to Asahikawa, the southernmost and northernmost major cities, is also possible with some effort.

While not possible at the moment, going from southernmost to northernmost station looks like it will be possible as soon as the rail lines currently under construction are completed. At dawn of the day in 20X6 when the mayor of Osaka will cut the ribbon on the second leg of the Chuo Shinkansen, I hope that I’ll be standing on the platform at Nishi-Oyama, waiting for my train to Wakkanai.

Footnotes

Changes

2025-09-01 00:32: Fixed an inaccuracy claiming that you could take the 800 series to Shin-Osaka. You can’t, you can only get it as far as Hakata.

  1. As previously, I’m ignoring stations on the Okinawa metro, which have no rail connection to the main Japanese rail network (for now). ↩

  2. It’s been said that this “may change in either direction”; I’m hoping that this is a way of being conservative and avoiding future delays, and the likelihood is that it will open sooner—following the principle of “under-promise and over-deliver”. ↩

  3. I use “when” rather than “if” here as an eternal optimist. ↩

  4. Yes, I realise that “multiple trains per hour” is an amazing privilege to much of the world; just by Shinkansen standards it’s on the low side. ↩