Bullet Trains to Nowhere?

This time of year the Joetsu Line, a bullet train, or shinkansen to Niigata prefecture from Tokyo, is packed with skiers. They head by the thousands to the old hot springs resort in the mountains east of the Sea of Japan, to the "Snow Country" made famous by Japan's Nobel laureate in literature Yasunari Kawabata.

The Joetsu Line was the original "shinkan…