Even for those who have never visited Japan, the city of Kyoto and the bullet train are symbols of the country and its culture. The shinkansen, as it is known, carries passengers from one end of the country to the other on a network of unmatched speed and efficiency.
Kyoto, with its traditional arts and crafts and its thousand-year-old temples, shrines and palaces, is a living museum, a historical treasure on a par with Oxford, Athens or Venice. But now these two icons of Japan are in conflict in a bitter clash between the ancient and the modern.
It centres on a plan to build a bullet train track from the town of Tsuruga to Japan’s second city of Osaka. The new line, an extension
AloJapan.com