Half an hour from Tokyo, the Toki bullet train cleared the urban sprawl. In the distance, the Japanese alps appeared and what I'd thought were clouds were actually snow-covered peaks. On their flanks, the russets and reds of autumn foliage.

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In the blink of an eye, this train had taken us from one world into another. Even finding our way to the right platform in the midst of Tokyo's rush hour, there was none of the stress of an airport. No queue for security, no long line at check-in or struggle with an automated bag machine that refuses to cooperate.

The only queue that formed was orderly and short - one for each car, clearly marked on the platform. Announcements made in Japanese are followed in English. Comprehensible English, unlike our airports.

And there was absolutely no delay. Not a second. The duck-billed Shinkansen run every few minutes, gliding into the station where they're cleaned perfectly for the next trip. It's mesmerising clockwork.

This is the very fast train of Anthony Albanese's dreams. The talking point that, like the autumn leaves presaging winter, signalled the coming of an election. For much of the election cycle, it lay seemingly dormant until it burst from the tunnel of grand ideas, flashed past, then vanished again. A fleeting mirage.

It broke out of the tunnel briefly this year, with a tantalising sketch of how the first stage between Newcastle and Sydney might be laid out. As always when it's mentioned, it was met with scepticism.

Watching the Japanese countryside from my comfortable seat, I wondered what it was that made Australia so reluctant to adopt some grand ideas, hesitant even to adopt some fairly pedestrian ones. I'd seen that in Sydney years ago, when the naysayers complained about the light rail. I see it in Canberra now with a never-ending gripe about extending its embryonic tram network.

No one in Sydney complains about the light rail now it's up and running, and I suspect the same will happen in Canberra.

Travelling to Niigata from Tokyo by Shinkansen, as the bullet train is known, takes about 45 minutes. It's not cheap, costing the equivalent of an airfare. But the convenience is undeniable. And there's legroom. Japanese business travellers peck away at their laptops as we speed northwards.

Those mountains I glimpsed earlier now loom above us, glinting in brilliant sunshine. Passing through a series of tunnels we emerge in a valley that's been blanketed in snow. It's........

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