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jr east has mostly delays, you can check the details here:
http://www.jreast.co.jp/

Non of the state's resources were being used for the Seattle monorail. The funds for the project were coming strictly from Seattle car owners.

It is sad to see public transportation in the US in such a dismal state. Transportation systems inside cities and between close cities such as Seattle and Portland are a joke. The freeways are so clogged that you can barely go 30 miles an hour much of the time. Even subway-elevated systems in cities like Chicago have dark, dingy stations and narrow stairways.

Go to Japan and see what a real transportation system is like. I go to Japan frequently and getting around is so much easier than in the US. The taxi service (passenger doors which open automatically and clean, professional drivers who wear white cloves) to trains which get cleaned regularly to planes, things run so much smoother than in the US.

For a corridor comparable to Portland - Seattle - Vancouver, BC, you would have over 100 trains going each way daily and the travel time between each of the cities would be about an hour. Inter urban travel times in the US are nowhere near as fast as Japan.

The unfortunate fact is that at the turn of the century the Seattle area had a mass transit system with travel times which today's car driver can only dream about.

JR East http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/index.html

One of the odd points about this train (other than the retractable cat ears) is that it isn't symmetrical. One end is a completely different shape than the other. Apparently this is just for testing purposes. The US airforce calls it a "flyoff", where two designs are built and tested head to head. In this case it seems they are having trouble determining what the best nose shape is. Normally this is a fairly simple problem, but Japan has a lot of tunnels, and diving into a tunnel at 360kph is a rather difficult aerodynamic problem. Nothing like a full-scale model. For much more detailed information, see this press release. (Japanese press releases have a habit of actually being informative, unlike their North American counterparts.)

They do use contactless cards ("Suica") on the Tokyo railways.

They seemed to be not as reliable as the plastic (magnetic) "cards".

http://www.jreast.co.jp/

This is already available in Japan in 3 different forms.

The first was Edy by Sony(japanese). It was a card, you added money to the card. You can use it all around Tokyo. The second was JR's Suika card(japanese) (JR is the largest train company in Japan). First they used to as your train pass to make it even faster to go through the turn styles, then they started expanding it so you can make purchases.

Finally NTT teamed up with Edy (I think they teamed up) and now all NTT cell phones have the same chip(english, flash, click the "i-Mode FeliCa Debut!" link) in them so you can pass your cellphone near the censor instead of a card and you'll get build through the phone.

The cards basically need to be within like 1 mm of the sensor surface but they only need to be there for a spit second.

What, you mean you didn't put the VTEC-sticker on it? For shame! *g*.

A friend of mine drives a Honda. She loves her civic too. Me, I find it too small, even in the front seat. Now, it's moot. I take the train

I am just wondering the cultural obsession that the Japanese have with rail systms, if any one has an answer.

There are probably many reasons. The first being that it would be impossible for Japan to function with this many people driving cars. There's not enough room! The train system in Japan (this is only the subways of Tokyo. There's an equally complex network of above ground trains in Tokyo that basically overlap with this system) is very extensive. You can practically get anywhere in Japan on a train, and maybe a 1 or 2 hour bus ride if the train isn't going exactly where you want.

Another reason is there are cute girls who go up and down the aisles selling snacks, beer, and sake! (and I guess coffee, too)

Millions, it ain't.

Here's a map of the Tokyo JR system that actually carries millions of passengers every day.