The famous Japanese luxury train, which combines the luxury and elegance of Japanese culture with its large-windowed piano bar and distinguished Michelin-starred chefs, started its service in Hokkaido in 2019.
Does anyone think luxury train travel is an outdated experience? If your answer is yes, you are very wrong or you have not heard of the Shiki-Shima special train.
Shiki-Shima, whose name means “Island of the Four Seasons”, invites you to immerse yourself in the daily life of Japan, to touch the country’s authentic culture with pure luxury and pleasure. It offers a complete immersion that can be truly unforgettable.
Your journey begins at Tokyo’s Ueno Station and passes through beautiful natural landscapes, including interesting stops in the Tohoku and Tukaido areas.
Shiki Shima: What does the world’s most luxurious train look like?
The champagne-colored train consists of ten carriages, two with impressive glass windows at their ends, offering a magnificent view of the archipelago’s northern nature, five bedrooms (suites) on two floors, a living room, a dining room and a luxury suite.
It was designed by Ken Okuyama, known for building luxury cars for companies like Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche. It is designed for thirty-four passengers.
The six cars consist of seventeen rooms, each luxuriously decorated in a contemporary Japanese style. It even has its own melody announcing that the train has arrived at the station, this is the “Train Suite”.
“Japan is not a very big country. But it’s an expensive country,” explains the East Japan Railway Company, which is responsible for producing a special train that has nothing to make a 5-star hotel jealous of.
For 950,000 yen (EUR 7,760) per person, you can book a luxury suite in a sleeping car at Shiki Shima, which leaves Tokyo and takes four days and three nights to complete the epic tour of Hokkaido.
Routes pass through places in Tochigi Prefecture such as Kyoto, Matsui, the Sea of Japan, Izumo, Miyajima, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Nikko Toshogu Shrine.
It has five suites on two floors, a huge living room that recreates the Japanese jungle, a restaurant run by Japan’s first Michelin-starred chef, Karsuhiro Nakamura, and a luxury suite.
- All facilities are carefully guarded. In fact, everyone has their own shower made of fragrant Japanese cypress wood. “We want our customers to experience the joy of knowing that there are things they don’t know yet. From the brilliance of every season to new experiences and discoveries,” the company explains.