Riding Japan's bullet train

The long, sleek train reeked of speed as it pulled into Tokyo station.

I was finally going to ride Japan’s world-famous “bullet train” at speeds over 100 miles an hour. It was difficult to reference speeds on rails of such proportions.

I was traveling from Tokyo to Kyoto, and later to Osaka, a total distance of some 375 miles.

This was to be new to me of rail travel for a number of reasons — the s...