Tokyo!

I arrived at the Narita Airport about 2 hours ago after a 2 hour flight from Shanghai. We then took a train (the “Narita Express”) to downtown Tokyo, about 1 mile from the hotel. The train took about 90 minutes.

However, the REAL train story happened yesterday! In Shanghai they have the world’s only MagLev train (Magnetic Levitation). It goes from the Shanghai airport for about kilometers. The best part is that this train goes 430 kilometers an hour! I’ll leave it up to you to compute how many miles an hour this is. Suffice to say this is the fastest train in the world.

Maglev works with magnets. The train has no wheels. Instead it “floats” above the track using magnets! You know how if you take two magnets and put them next to each other they will repel? Same idea, but they use electricity to charge the magnets.

The scenery just blew by as well. I tried to take a picture of a parking lot out the window, but it’s completely blurry.

Here are some links for more information about this train:

http://www.gluckman.com/Maglev.html

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20030809_pudong_airport_maglev_in_depth.htm

http://travel.howstuffworks.com/maglev-train.htm

Oh yea, in Shanghai we stayed at the tallest hotel in the world (http://shanghai.grand.hyatt.com/).  It was unbelievably nice and a beautiful structure.