Bill - Good eye! That radius around the yard is 16" and some of the longer Bullet trains like the 700 & 500 do have some problems with that curve. John - there are a couple of more Japanese suppliers that also sell anime and trains. PM me if you want the info.
Oh how I wish I had the room for a layout like that. Shinkansen are just out of the question on a 30" wide table. There's so much crying out to modeled in Japan and so little time and space.
I have a Kato E1 Max that runs just fine on an 11 in radius 2x4ft oval. You have to remember that in Japan a 30in table is HUGE so most of the equipment runs on what we would consider tight radius track. It may not look perfect but man does it RUN!
True. It's not so much that I couldn't run something like that, but that I can't build the elevated viaduct and surface tracks that I would like to.
It's been a while since I've posted anything on my layout, here is a recent video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2iNFrmEgE8