Japan is adding a new luxury bullet train upgrade

Japan's famous Shinkansen train, seen here with Mount Fuji in the background, is so popular that a fancy addition will soon be debuted. Stefan Nehls/imageBROKER/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource

This week in travel news: tourists are coping with extreme heat, one of the world’s most popular vacation destinations is tripling its tourist tax, and a gold bar is up for grabs in Finland.

Japan has broken its tourism record every year since the pandemic. As more and more people take the country’s famous Shinkansen high-speed trains, Japan’s rail system has rolled out a fancy new product: private rooms.

Starting this October, some travellers going from Tokyo to cities like Kyoto and Osaka will have the option to purchase a ticket for the “Supreme Class.” These are private cabins with lockable doors that guarantee privacy on board, and the largest rooms even have small sofas. Travellers in these cars can adjust the lighting and air conditioning to their own preferences, too.

That’s not all. A new sleeper car service called “Luna Azul” (Spanish for “blue moon”) will offer lie-flat seats along the Tohoku route, which carries people to prefectures like Aomori and Akita in northeast Japan. It’ll debut sometime next year.

However, not all the changes in Japanese tourism will necessarily be welcomed by visitors. The country’s “sayonara tax” will increase from ¥1,000 (about US$6) to ¥3,000 (US$18.50) on July 1. The fee is added to the cost of airfare, not requested in person. According to the Japanese government, the money raised from the tax goes toward supporting infrastructure.

Coping with the heat

The solstice was this week, but it has already felt like peak summer for many of us around the world. Record high temperatures across Europe, Asia and the US are affecting travellers during the peak season.

If you already have your summer vacation planned, don’t panic. We have some helpful tips for navigating travel during hot weather, such as visiting outdoor attractions early in the morning, taking breaks, and staying hydrated not just by drinking water but by eating salads and water-filled fruits like melons and grapes.

One of the classic summer vacation foods is ice cream, but eating it fast enough to avoid melting is always a challenge. In Turkey, they’ve solved that problem with dondurma, a stretchy, chewy ice cream that never drips. It comes in gorgeous Mediterranean flavors like pistachio and sour cherry, too.

A lesser-visited gem

Palau, a country in the northern Pacific Ocean near Taiwan and the Philippines, only gets a few thousand tourists every year. Its most famous attraction is a crater lake filled with a rare, nontoxic jellyfish species that you might recognize from being used as a standard Mac computer wallpaper.

The country also played a small but significant role in the Pacific Theater in World War II. Peleliu, one of Palau’s islands, was occupied by the Japanese. Late in the war, the US invaded the island in a multi-week siege that caused thousands of deaths on both sides.

Now, visitors to Peleliu can explore the island’s cave systems and see tanks, cannons and other objects left in situ.

The great outdoors

Every summer, South Korea’s southern city of Busan holds a sand art exhibit on trendy Haeundae Beach. This year, for the 20th anniversary of the festival, CNN met a veteran sand sculptor, who walked us through some of the most intricate pieces.

Lilit Marcus, CNN