New class of seats positioned above Green Car in luxury.

Right now, if you’re taking a ride on the Shinkansen as part of your Japan travels, you’ve got two classes of tickets to choose from. There’s the standard ticket, in either reserved or non-reserved seat versions, and then there are tickets for the Green Car, essentially the Shinkansen’s “first-class” section with roomier seats and some additional services.

There’s yet another option on its way though: semi-private booth seats.

This new class of seat is coming to the Tokaido Shinkansen, the bullet train route that connects Tokyo with Kyoto and Osaka (and which has continuous service through to the Sanyo Shinkansen between Osaka and Fukuoka). Designated hankoshitsu (“half-individual”) seats in Japanese, the semi-private booths have walls with lockable doors separating them from the car’s central aisle. They’re equipped with luxurious seats with extra reclining capabilities and extendable footrests, allowing you to stretch out and really relax as you zoom along Japan’s most popular Shinkansen route at 285 kilometers (177 miles) per hour.

As for why these are “semi”-private, each booth actually has three seats in it. Between individual entrance doors for each passenger and the chairs’ size, though, they still offer a high degree of privacy. The chairs can also be rotated to face one another, for example if you and a traveling companion book seats in front/back of each other in the same compartment.

Shinkansen trains with semi-private booth seats will have them located in Car 10, which is otherwise a Green Car, with a total of six semi-private booth seats replacing 10 regular seats, as shown in the diagram below.

Pricing is yet to be announced, but considering the small number of seats at the very top of the Shinkansen luxury scale, it’s a safe bet that they’re not being aimed at travelers on tight budgets.

The semi-private booth seats are scheduled to be introduced on select Tokaido Shinkansen trains with N700S-series cars in the spring of 2027.

Source: JR Central via NHK News Web
Images: JR Central
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