Funny Society

The Tilted Bullet Train That Turned Everyone Into Michael Jackson

A Tokaido Shinkansen halted on a banked curve, leaving passengers leaning at an impossible angle for three hours.

· 3 min · Togetter

What's going on

A Tokaido Shinkansen — the high-speed line that links Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka — was brought to a stop after an incident on the tracks involving a person. As it happened, the train came to rest not on a straight stretch but partway through a curve.

On high-speed curves, the track is deliberately banked: the outer rail is raised above the inner one so trains can sweep through at speed without flinging passengers sideways. At full speed you barely notice it — the lean of the carriage and the pull of the curve quietly cancel each other out. A train stopped dead on that same banked curve, however, has nothing left to cancel. The floor simply sits at a slant, and it stays that way. For the people aboard this train, that slant held for roughly three hours.

The result: standing passengers had to lean hard just to keep their footing, frozen at an angle that looked uncannily like Michael Jackson's gravity-defying tilt from "Smooth Criminal." The internet, of course, noticed.

Comments

The train that got stuck — because it stopped on a curve, it sat at this angle for a good 3 hours lol. Even just staying seated was kind of a struggle.
Brutal.
3 hours at this angle is honestly rough 😂
3 hours of this is way too much.
This is the kind of thing that’s secretly pretty exhausting, I bet… hang in there 😵‍💫
3 hours is tough both physically and mentally… really, hang in there. Above all, glad everyone’s safe.
This came across my feed — I’ve had this happen too. A train stopped right on a curve just before pulling into Hamamatsu (a city on the line between Tokyo and Osaka) and stayed tilted for about 2 hours. Loads of people had to grab the seats just to get to the restroom or they’d topple over, and if you put your phone on the tray table it’d go sliiide right off, like, of all the places to stop… 😭 was pretty much my reaction 🤣
The person in the aisle is totally doing a Michael 👀
Everyone’s Michael Jackson 😆
So it’s the full Michael Jackson state, huh.
So without the G-force from moving, it tilts this much…
So the car-body tilt function just stays on even when it comes to a stop, huh.
Jumping in here — the Tokaido line has pretty sharp curves to begin with, and when the 300 series (a shinkansen model introduced in 1992) came out they increased the inward lean, the cant (the banking of the track on curves so trains can take them at speed), so it really gets you. At times like this, I do sometimes wish they could tilt the car-body the other way…
Shin-Kobe Station is kind of always like this (its platform sits right on a curve).
Trains waiting just before Omiya (a major station north of Tokyo) often end up like this too. A real free cant-experience session.
Is one foot off the ground?
Uh, somebody seems to be floating lol
There’s an old dude instantly busting out Bukujutsu (the flying technique from Dragon Ball).
Core workout.
You could film Gravity in here (「ゼロ・グラビティ」 is the Japanese title of the 2013 space film).
If this were a Drifters skit (a legendary Japanese slapstick comedy troupe famous for their tilting-house sets), this is the part where you just keep walking home at this exact angle.

My take

Three hours without ever getting back to level — that sounds genuinely rough. It seems we humans are fragile little creatures when it comes to being off-balance.

Comments loosely translated for tone.

Source https://togetter.com/li/2711451