World’s most first high-speed train, Shinkansen and cleaners

Japan’s Shinkansen, or bullet train, is one of the world’s most high-speed train. Surprisingly, even with over 120,000 trains running on the same line each year, the average delay time is a mere 36 seconds. Since 2014, shinkansen trains run regularly at speeds up to 320 km/h, placing them alongside the French TGV and German ICE as the fastest trains in the world.

Shinkansen is famous not only the speed but also cleaners. Part of the reason the bullet train system can run as smoothly as it does it thanks to the “hospitality group” working behind the scenes of the sleek,futuristic facades of these famous trains. These cleaning crews are charged with covering every inch of a train’s interior when it arrives at its final stop and preparing it for the next wave of customers- and they have just 7 minuets to to do it!

Bullet trains shuttle in and out of the platforms at Tokyo stations 210 times each day. These cleaning crews so called, TESSEI(service company name) oba san, or grannies are divided into teams and each teams clean around 20 trains per day. Not a glamorous work, but the group has been called Japan’s  strongest team by Nikkei Business magazine.