Yes, I'm looking forward to the shinkansen getting all the way to Sapporo... I say "all the way" as though it's some distant land... from what I remember of what I wrote in my book on the Shinkansen (and unless the route has changed) the distance between Tokyo and Sapporo will actually be a bit less than Tokyo & Hakata (Fukuoka). Despite my support for the shinkansen linking Sapporo, my views on the railways in the UK are a bit different... but that's probably a topic for a longer chat elsewhere one day.