High-speed route
Hokuriku Shinkansen
Tokyo → Tsuruga · Japan
Hokuriku Shinkansen in pictures




Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 576 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 8 min
- Average speed
- 184 km/h
- Top speed
- 260 km/h
- Operator
- JR East · JR West
- Train
- E7 / W7 Series
- Countries
- Japan
- In service since
- 2015
- Runs
- 1–2× hourly (Kagayaki & Hakutaka)
- Highest point
- 941 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Over the Japanese Alps to the samurai gardens of Kanazawa: copper-and-blue E7s built for deep snow country.
The run to the Sea of Japan opens with a long mountain climb to the resort town of Karuizawa, at 941 m the highest point reached anywhere on the shinkansen network. Beyond Nagano, host of the 1998 Winter Olympics, the line threads tunnel after tunnel to the coast at Itoigawa, the Tateyama peaks filling the left-hand windows on the approach to Toyama. Through running to Kanazawa began in 2015, putting Kenroku-en garden and the Higashi Chaya teahouse lanes under three hours from Tokyo.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1926393 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 5 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: JR East · JR West — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Karuizawa at 941 m
- Zenkō-ji temple, Nagano
- Sea of Japan at Itoigawa
- Tateyama range from Toyama
- Kenroku-en garden, Kanazawa
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