My husband recently struck up a friendship with a japanese ex Shinkansen conductor who immigrated to germany to become a train driver.
He told us driving a Shinkansen is a highly demanding job , therefore conductors are replaced after four or five years.
I haven’t found any information to confirm this. Maybe someone here can tell me more.
Thank you
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/13sobe4/question_about_shinkansen_drivers/
4 comments
Considering how difficult it is to get the licence, I doubt that’s accurate. Here’s a short documentary about a mother who’s a shinkansen driver, and I didn’t catch any mention of such a short career span. In fact, given her age I’d say she’s already well past that. It’s in Japanese but you can auto translate the captions on a PC. https://youtu.be/8VhbdKfjrpY
One of my exes dad was a shinkansen driver. She said it wasn’t a good job, and he did look really tired every time I saw him
That doesn’t sound accurate given the labor shortage in Japan. I doubt they could keep the trains crewed if they replaced them that often unless by replaced he means transferring them every few years. Train driver and conductor are generally high-stress jobs.
Many years ago I saw the facility in Tokyo where Shinkansen drivers sleep after late/before early trains. They had beds that automatically fold up into the wall at a set time, to make sure nobody overslept and missed the train they were supposed to drive….