See photos of Japan’s precious slow-motion train

Key takeaways: 

• The Japanese are smitten with bullet trains – but they’re equally obsessed with those that aren’t so swift.

For many Japanese, Tōhoku is a lost area, part of the nation that has remained intact in the minds of the Tokyo elite. There is no Hello Kitty theme garden here. No international airport or shopping centre madness. 

There are no flashy neon-lit Nintendo arcades, Godzilla-sized buildings or robot-run hotels. 

No tourists, also. Here is retro Japan, refined and simple, and that’s precisely why I came: to travel slowly, to not see the clock.

Except for the speed, the Resort Shirakami is unusual for other causes. 

The only train to go straight along Japan’s coastline, its USP is dealing with a particular sort of nostalgia, and my trip on the limited-stop service was a sell-out. Three trains operate on the Gonō Line, with three back-to services every day, and I was on board “Kumagera”. 

It joined service in March 2006 and is named after a black woodpecker that stays in the Unesco-listed Shirakami-Sanchi Highlands, the world’s most significant remaining pristine beech forest, through which the train goes. The train even has a tangerine snub nose on the front, encouraged by the setting sun.