Singha wrote:how ever in terms of tight discipline, looks, dress, precision and general stds nothing comes close to the shinkansens on home ground! there are pretenders but the original is still the best.
The Japanese (thankfully) take immense pride in some of their achievements & culture. And Japan is also a very small country, and pretty much has a uniform culture. Perhaps all these add to the unique running aspects of Shinkansen. Such a system would take 100s of years to come to India.
My first onsite posting was to a city in Japan, but I did not get an opportunity to travel in the bullet trains. I could only see them fly past some of the stations. Even their normal trains generally stick to their time tables. I had to make a trip to another city, and taking the help of a Japanese colleague got the time table worked out. I had to change trains at two points and as per the time table connections were available within minutes of my arrival at each point. The local time tables are generally only available in Japanese.
But on the day of arrival, heavy winds in some areas forced the trains to reduce the speeds. And this messed up the time tables (and my schedules) as well. My first train itself arrived 15 mins late, and on a different platform. I had to figure out connection trains at the two intermediate places. It was only the basic Indian quality -
"Ask & Proceed" which helped me here. The staff were off course helpful, and in the local trains I was a character of interest

. I also saw the Japanese technique of
"Point & say" diligently followed by the JR staff (it looked a bit comical then, but later understanding the process better I could appreciate that).