Foot spa in a fast train

(Sink your feet into this)

In July 2014, JR East launched Japan’s first bullet train with onboard foot spas. The bullet train, named Toreiyu - a combination of the English word "train", the French "soleil" and "yu", the Japanese word for hot water –will have one car with two 2.4-metre-long foot spa tubs facing windows and also a car with a bar counter and tatami-mat flooring with tables made from cherrywood

Soaking in hot water is a ritualised and extremely popular leisure activity in Japan. The footbaths are intended for passengers to relax with, rather than to clean their feet. Each footbath can be used by four people at once and the tubs are built on a raised stone platform, so passengers can easily take in the scenery rolling by outside the windows, and are intended as places for passengers to relax rather than to clean their feet.

The new service also features a carriage with a bar counter and tatami-mat flooring with tables made from cherrywood. What could be more relaxing than sitting back with a glass of Kirin beer watching Japan’s beautiful countryside roll by?

The train has been redesigned from the E3-series bullet train, which is retiring from the Akita bullet train, and can carry up to 143 passengers. Famed car designer Ken Okuyama, who was born in Yamagata, designed these new bullet trains. Okuyama is perhaps best known for designing the Enzo Ferrari.

Toreiyu will run on weekends on the Yamagata Shinkansen Line between Fukushima city, capital of Fukushima Prefecture, and Shinjo, Yamagata Prefecture, 148 km or roughly a two-hour journey., mostly on weekends The city of Fukushima is over 60 kilometres northwest of the tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant on the Pacific coast.

It is part of a campaign to promote tourism in Yamagata, a farming area known for rice, beef, cherries and pears. According to JR East, the ceiling and the back of the passenger seats will be decorated with reliefs of cherries, a specialty Japanese people firmly associate with Yamagata Prefecture.

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