I hope JR will follow it.

But that's because Europe is still running legacy trains... There are some nice high speed rail networks in France, Germany and Italy, but the interconnections are quite poor. It would be much better if Europe would finally start investing in making a European network similar to the Shinkansen.

@@Martao98 But even high speed trains' earliest arrivals at destinations are sometimes not early enough. A lot of the rail companies in major countries with high speed trains thought in error that they now don't need night trains but they didn't realise that night trains also fill a sector of the market and you should have both. I think the French govt realised this so recently reintroduced several night trains back into their network. JP Rail has a solid point about the night train prices in Japan. I lived there when there were still a lot of night trains in the mid 2000s but I never took them once (which I now deeply regret!) because the fares were so expensive. @JP Rail - I disagree about there being no JR areas that could have a night train one area. JR East could have night trains to Tohoku area (Aomori, Akita, Yamagata) that would all be within it's own area. Even to Hokkaido would be only two companies. To be honest when I went from Tokyo to Hokkaido in 2017 I would have much rather taken a night train that went all the way through to Sapporo in one go, than get Hayabusa, stay overnight in Hakodate and then continue on the next day on the Super Hokuto. And the night buses might be cheaper but yuck!, They are nowhere near as comfortable as taking the night train.

Highly unlikely. Shinkansen trains and tracks shut down completely for maintenance during night.

Yeah I never heard that the night trains were unpopular. Actually I heard the opposite that they were but the carriages got run down and JR companies for reasons outlined in the video couldn't be faffed investing in new carriages. IMHO, looking at the night trains comeback in Europe where they face many of the same issues (track user fees, going through multiple countries on different rail company tracks, multiple railways involved, cheap night buses and low cost airlines etc), writing off night trains is a big mistake. Exactly. You can't get from Tokyo even on the earliest departing Nozomi to Yamaguchi that early, compared to if you took the Sunrise, and then swapped to a shinkansen at Okayama. JR doesn't seem to understand this.

I stayed first couple of nights on my trip in Sep-Oct 2019 in Tokyo at that hostel. Sadly I saw on social media due to Covid it has shut down 😭

The only reason I’m seeing why Nozomi trains are absent in the standard JR Pass is because the sheer number of people using that service. On peak times, it’s not unusual to have one departing Tokyo Station every 10 minutes. This comes the issue of seat reservation in Hikari trains. Due to sheer increase of JR Pass holders in the recent years, people are struggling to book seats in these trains forcing them to wait longer to snag good seats or being forced to take the even slower Kodama trains. JR needs to rethink its coverage policy!

Greetings from Argentina

Totally agree. I travelled by Hayabusa shinkansen and stayed overnight in Hakodate and took Ltd Express Super Hokuto next day in early 2017. Just being able to travel overnight without getting a hotel or having to connect to a different train would've been much easier and less complicated to get to Sapporo!

Thank you for always watching my video. In fact, luxury trains like Seven Stars in Kyushu aren't really very profitable. I will talk about that in the next video. :)

Most people don't, expect for those who are travelling back home to Shikoku and so on.

@@smartfrenandromax6651 I mean most of the customers of the Sunrise Express

Exactly. For meeting my friend in Iwakuni in the morning coming from Tokyo, it is much better to take the Sunrise and change to a shinkansen at Okayama to get there nice and early compared to even the earliest arrival time if I took the earliest departing Nozomi from Tokyo for most/some of the way. Night trains are a very efficient way to travel. Shinkansens and other high speed trains are very cool. but they are not everything.

There are plenty - Kuga's travels and Solo Travel You tube channels have multiple night ferry trip videos. It;s interesting to see almost no one else on those ferries. I don't know how they survive financially - I guess by freight mainly as there sems like a lot of trucks going onboard. But they look a lot less popular for foot traffic than the night trains.

Problem is that Tokyo-Sapporo is one of the busiest domestic air routes in the world, so most customers will probably opt to fly and grab a hotel for the night.

@@mikegaskin5542 The thing is that people are flying now because there isn't really an alternative. I think departing in the evening and arriving in the morning actually can be a good option if the level of comfort is somewhat similar to that in a hotel room, for a comparable price to flight + hotel. The main advantage is that taking a (1!) train is easier and more relaxing than flying (for which you would have to change several times). By which I don't mean a night train would replace all flights, that's true...

There are two more reasons. The first is the capacity of the Seikan Tunnel. The Hokkaido Shinkansen and freight trains operate, and the time that other trains can pass is very limited. In particular, the Shinkansen takes time to maintain other than conventional lines, so the capacity is almost full. The second is the life of the vehicle. Hokutoboshi, which connects Tokyo and Sapporo, and Twilight Express, which connects Osaka and Sapporo, have been discontinued because new vehicles are needed. The sleeper train to Sapporo was necessary for JR Hokkaido like JR Shikoku because it brings tourists from Tokyo and Osaka, which have a large population. However, when comparing the Shinkansen and sleeper trains, the Shinkansen is more important.

@@JPRailcom This might be true at the day where the demand is higher but isn't the number of Shinkansen using the Seikan Tunnel smaller in the night compared to the day? Therefore. sleeper trains could pass the Seikan tunnel at early in the evening or in the morning. Or am I getting something wrong?

There is a little room in the Seikan Tunnel to run the sleeper train. So, sometimes group trains using Cassiopeia and Shikishima go through the Seikan Tunnel to Hokkaido. However, both trains have only one train set, so they cannot be operated as regular trains. Therefore, it operates only as a group train and is sold as a tour by a travel agency. Also, JR East rents a locomotive from JR Freight because Cassiopeia passes through the Seikan Tunnel. When the Shinkansen passed through the Seikan Tunnel, the voltage of the overhead line in the tunnel increased, and the locomotives owned by JR East could not pass through. This is also the reason why regular trains cannot be operated.

China does have HSR sleeper trains and they appear to be relatively popular, though they apparently don't run every night and are more of a Friday/Sunday night thing. But there are two problems with that idea in Japan: one is that the Tohoku and Tokaido Shinkansen tracks are not connected in Tokyo (JPRail has a good video on why that is) and the other is that the overnight period is used for track maintenance and it is hard to fit in train services around that.

Correct. The next step is actually a Sleeper Shinkansen, Kyushu ~ Honshu ~ Hokkaido. San Seto Shima (Three Strait Island)? Sunset Shinkansen? Twilight Shinkansen?

@@smartfrenandromax6651 Y'know, I actually had deep personal thoughts about this. I reused the names Hokutosei and Suisei which start out from Somewhere in Shikoku and Kagoshima-Chuo respectively, and they'd couple at Okayama before moving together to Sapporo