I love trains and I especially love trains in Japan. They are everything that many great Western railway nations used to be. There is a diversity that is quite extraordinary, with parallel lines and companies (eg: JR and Hankyu in Kansai), many liveried carriages and engines, staff formalities and rituals, small one-rice-field country stations and the like. As they say, I miss the whole shebang.

Another aspect of train culture in Japan is a certain cuteness of style, which I suppose comes out of a culture that lionizes manga and anime. Dressing up trains as fictional characters is not exclusive to Japan (we have a Thomas in the Blue Mountains) but they do make a habit of it. An example below highlights Pikachu and friends and operates in the Ichinoseki area of Iwate prefecture. The train (a KiHa 100 series diesel) is dwelling here at Rikuchū-Matsukawa on the Ofunato line.



A second view of the same train, which, through diligent research, I now know to be called the Pokemon With You Train, resting here at Kesennuma Station on the same line. As a point of interest, this is still as far as one can travel on this line, all stations beyond this point being closed as a result of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.