Akita is the city served at the northern end of Japan’s Akita Shinkansen service.
The Akita Shinkansen links Tokyo with Akita in the Tohoku region. It opened in 1997 and uses the Komachi service name. Unlike a conventional Shinkansen-only route, much of the line between Morioka and Akita is a converted “mini-Shinkansen” railway. The route uses narrower legacy infrastructure than Japan’s standard Shinkansen lines, so trains are designed to fit that corridor.
Akita trains usually run coupled to Tohoku Shinkansen services between Tokyo and Morioka, where they separate. This arrangement explains why the Akita Shinkansen is both a high-speed service and a route with lower speeds than the main high-speed tracks. The destination city, Akita, should not be confused with Akita Prefecture, the wider administrative area surrounding it.