Japan’s busiest bullet train line was brought to a halt on Wednesday after a metre-long snake wrapped itself around a power line, shorting the electricity supply and stranding hundreds of passengers.
Shinkansen trains running between Tokyo and Osaka were brought to a standstill by the snake, with news reports showing footage of people inside trains waiting for services to resume. Power did not appear to have been cut inside trains, with lights and air conditioning still functioning, according to passengers.
The outage happened at 5.25pm between Maibara and Gifu-Hashima stations, after the snake appeared to have climbed an electricity pole, meeting its demise as it attempted to slither along the overhead line. Power was not restored until after 7pm.
The Golden Week series of national holidays began on Wednesday, with millions on the move across Japan, returning to home towns and taking family vacations. In addition, the Osaka Expo 2025, which opened mid-April and runs until October, is attracting even more people than usual to the city.
“I use the shinkansen several times a month, but this is the first time I have experienced suspensions due to a power outage,” Satoshi Tagawa, 46, who was returning to Tokyo, told Kyodo News.
The line connects Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka with more than 370 trains daily carrying an average of 430,000 passengers. Reaching speeds of up 285km per hour, it takes less than two and a half hours to Osaka from the Japanese capital.
More than 7 billion passengers have ridden the tokaido shinkansen since it opened as Japan’s first high-speed rail line just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It has an exemplary safety record, with not a single injury or accident recorded, and trains running to within an average of 1.6 minutes of their scheduled times, according to operator Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai).
However, it is not the first time reptiles have delayed shinkansen.
A 40cm snake inside a carriage on a Nagoya to Tokyo service in April last year caused consternation among passengers. Staff were unable to find the creature, and the carriage was replaced, resulting in a 17-minute delay.
In 2009, an electricity outage was also caused by a snake climbing on to power lines, stopping trains between Tokyo and Fukushima.
