TOKYO — Some of the tens of thousands of commuters likely felt like hissing themselves after a snake brought Japan’s busiest bullet train line to an unexpected stop.
The 39-inch reptile managed to slither onto an overhead power line and got tangled, shorting the electricity supply, according to a spokesperson for JR Central, the operator of the line. This incident halted service along the Tokaido Shinkansen route between Osaka and Tokyo.
The power outage occurred at 5:26 p.m. local time (4:26 a.m. ET) and wasn’t fully restored until 7 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), impacting 86 trains in total.
The Tokaido Shinkansen is a vital transportation corridor, carrying more than 430,000 passengers daily between Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Known for high-speed travel—up to 180 miles per hour—and remarkable punctuality, the line averaged just 1.6 minutes of delay per train last year across its 372 daily departures.
“I use the Shinkansen several times a month, but this is the first time I’ve experienced a suspension due to a power failure,” said 46-year-old Satoshi Tagawa, a passenger heading back to Tokyo, in an interview with Kyodo News.
“I’m relieved,” said 26-year-old Kazutoshi Tachi after hearing that service had resumed. “But I’m tired of these issues with the Shinkansen. I just want the trains to run on time.”
Encounters with snakes on Shinkansen lines are extremely rare—but not unheard of. Just last year, a 16-inch snake managed to slither into a passenger carriage on a train traveling the Tokyo-Nagoya route.
JR Central said it remains unclear how the reptile got inside the train.
Reporting by Judith Motha in Tokyo and Michael Motha in Hong Kong.
