It¡¯s been a long time coming and was almost derailed by budget wrangling in the 1980s, but after more than four decades of planning and construction, the Hokkaido Shinkansen Line, which runs between?Shin-Aomori and Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto, Hokkaido, and slices the travel time from Tokyo to Hokkaido by 53 minutes, is now in operation.