Japan’s Shinkansen trains are commonly known as bullet trains.
The English nickname refers to the trains’ early streamlined appearance, especially the rounded or pointed nose of the first 0 Series sets. The Japanese word Shinkansen means “new trunk line,” which is the formal name for the high-speed railway system.
The bullet-train label is widely understood internationally, but not every high-speed train is technically a Shinkansen. Shinkansen services use dedicated high-speed infrastructure, while other countries use several different train families and operating systems.
The nickname is also sometimes applied loosely to high-speed trains elsewhere, although those trains do not belong to Japan’s Shinkansen network.