Happy 60th birthday, Shinkansen

Welcome to The Travel Wire (by Nomadic Notes), where I curate the best travel reads of the week.

Travel reads

• How Japan’s tsunami-ravaged coastline is being transformed by hope

“Iwate and Fukushima Prefectures were ravaged by the 2011 tsunami that precipitated a catastrophic nuclear disaster. Now, this tragic, beguiling region is welcoming travellers back.”

• Xiaohongshu has revolutionized Chinese tourism in Southeast Asia

“The lifestyle and social media platform, often compared to Instagram, is turning obscure sites into must-see attractions.”

• ‘Tourists also want an authentic city, not a theme park’: The redevelopment plan that seeks to give La Rambla back to Barcelona residents

• Nihon and only (nowhere I'd rather be)

“AKA, Tokyo for beginners.”

• The allure of remote places!

We recently visited four increasingly remote locations in Iceland and Greenland. What did we think?

• Where literary ghosts linger: a book critic goes to Dublin (archive)

"The Irish city, once home to the likes of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, is known for its bookstores, libraries and pubs, where writers found inspiration over pints of Guinness."

• What to see in Ladakh, India, including festival where Buddhist monks dance to defeat evil (archive)

“A tour of Ladakh in India’s Himalayas takes in a Unesco World Heritage monastery and a festival where Buddhist monks dance in wooden masks.”

• He spent 7 years walking around the world. But his biggest challenge was being back home

• I’ve had enough of smug travel writers boasting about packing light (archive)

Japan Train Travel Festival

• Japan’s magic bullet: 60 years of the train that helped rebuild the idea of a country

• Preserving local railways can foster sustainability in Japan. These case studies show how

• World's first 'zombie bullet train' set to haunt passengers on trip from Tokyo to Osaka

I don’t like horror movies, yet somehow zombie movies are acceptable to me. I loved Train to Busan, and now Japan is going to make a zombie train a reality. Mundane Halloween is probably more my speed, and I’ve already had my zombie-train era when I used to commute on the Central Line in London.

The Moo Deng festival continues

• Cutie 'Moo Deng' woos public to Si Racha, Chon Buri

I was planning to go to Si Racha in March 2020, but you know what happens next. I was in Chonburi in March 2020 to research urban development in the Eastern Economic Corridor. That’s about as fun as it sounds. Instead of going to Si Racha, I went back to Bangkok and got the first flight back to Vietnam (where I was living at the time).

In case you were wondering, pygmy hippos are not endemic to Chonburi Province

Moo Deng: The shrinking habitat of the world's most celebrated hippo

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James Clark.