On June, 30, JR West introduced a Shinkansen 500 refurbished with the famous character Hello Kitty.
Let’s study the story of this Shinkansen model introduced in 1997.
SpeedThe Shinkansen 500 developed by JR West first ran in 1997 between
Shin-Osaka and
Fukuoka on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line. In 1998, they ran 7 round trip daily between Tokyo and Hakata as
a Nozomi. First the first time, The journey was less than one hour, 4h49.
In 1999, the 700 series made its debut and was considered as more suitable with two doors by car instead of only one for the Shinkansen 500. In the end, JR West produced only 9 500 series and operations on the Nozomi service ended in February 2010.
Learn more about
the history of the shinkansen.