out my experience on board the Resort Shirakami Train, which crawls along the Gonō Line through Akita Prefecture in northern Honshu's Tōhoku region. Slow by anyone's standards, it's a train purposely built for travelling tortoise-like from the city of Aomori to Akita, often averaging just 10km/h. Operator JR-East (East Japan Railway Company) calls the service a "Joyful Train", and a trip on such a leaden-footed locomotive is like few other sightseeing journeys in the country.
