Comments by "Robert Morgan" (@RobertMorgan) on "Experience JAPAN" channel.

flying makes little sense in a nation that size. I live in St Louis, which is about a 4 hour drive from Chicago. It's a 60 minute flight to Chicago, but when you figure in security, wait time, luggage, parking, car rental maybe, it costs you way more TIME to fly. If you left for the airport and I left at the same time via car, no joke I'd be waiting for you in Chicago at the airport to collect you from your flight. For THAT journey an EASIER to get onto train trip at high speed would be worth it. AND WE HAVE IT, AMTRAK runs between Chitown and STL in 90 minutes.
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yet here in the US I can take a train voyage that takes a week with my own private cabin and large bed, for about the same price. Look into the California Zephyr, people come HERE from Japan and all over the world to take that trip.
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it's still ironic a place that makes such amazing cars doesn't have the thousands of miles of open road like the US does to properly enjoy them. I've had to explain to visitors before no, you can't take a week trip to the US and see NYC and LA and Florida, and the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, that's like a week of just driving alone, even grossly violating the speed limit. And it's even slower by train.
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it would only be viable if it was easier than driving over long distances. The train that gets you from NYC to LA in 24 hours traveling the entire trip at 200mph plus, THAT would be a step up. High speed train FREIGHT is where our biggest opportunity is. People rarely criss-cross the US coast to coast, I've been here 40 years and never have once. But GOODS DO, all the time, constantly. A train you could put a product on in NYC and it arrives 24 hours later in LA, that would be booked overcapacity 24/7/365, that would be a money printing press.
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It's funny how I saw the bento box in the intro and thought that looks delicious, but then I learned it was beef tongue and immediately looked askance at it. Had you just put that in front of me I'd have chowed down with abandon. Sometimes not knowing is better.
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The trains here in the US are individual cabins with beds. I'm looking forward to the California Zephyr, that's like a 5 day train trip from Chicago to San Francisco and back.
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Funny thing is, his ticket cost for that is WAY less than a first class train trip here in the US. I'm looking at taking the California Zephyr trip from Chicago to SF and back, and that's several thousand dollars.
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it's true, imagine the millions of poor Americans these trains would create due to job loss across a bunch of different sectors. The US could be Japan if we just had a genocide that homogenized our entire society racially and classwise, and cut our population by about 200 million. THEN we could be Japan. Our biggest problems are class/race strata/divisions, and our sheer population. It's easier to get 124 million of the mostly same people to be on the same page like Japan is than here where you have twice as many people and 1/5th of all of them absolutely seem to hate the other 4/5th no matter what 1/5th you ask. We never work together, and there's so many of us we can never agree. @jayabacromby675
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it never made sense to me, Poland and Japan are the size of the small state I live in. I can drive anywhere in a few hours, so I don't need a 300mph train. You need that for like NYC to LA trips. It's just odd that small places that have no need to move long distances fast put in the effort to do it. In the US we need FREIGHT high speed rail, it makes no sense for people because we have PLANES. You can fly from NYC to LA in 8 hours, why TF would you spend 30 hours even on a 200mph train? BUT sending GOODS from NYC to LA in 24 hours via train, you'd have a waiting list for that service. We need giant freight trains running across the US at 300mph minimum. We have the space for it. @Sunshine-uz4cx
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3:30 I'll just buy some water, casually, instantly, via phone.... American Me: damn future living people.
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