“There’s something about the sound of a train that’s very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.”

– Paul Simon

A story about a highschool girl who has been the lone passenger of a train in Japan has been viral on the web. So upon learning that the train station is in Japan, I asked my friend to go there during one of our roadtrips.

 

So after visiting the Taushubetsu Bridge yesterday, we went to the said train station. Kami-Shirataki Station is a railway station on the Sekihoku Main Line in Engaru, Hokkaido opened in October 1932. The station has a single-track only.

According to the report of the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV posted on its Facebook page, the station was being kept open for the benefit of just one high-school girl who used the station to commute to and from school. On our visit there, we saw that the station is visited by a train twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. This is just in time for the schoolgirl to get to class and come home.

Patronage of this station had dramatically fallen because of its remote location. The report also said that the train station is just waiting until the girl graduated from highschool for its scheduled closure.  JR Hokkaido announced in July 2015 that it would be closing the station along with three others on the line (Kyū-Shirataki Station, Shimo-Shirataki Station, and Kanehana Station) on March 26, 2016. Incidentally, this is the same date that the new Hokkaido Shinkansen will have their maiden trip between Shin-Aomori and Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto station. Done with the old, in with the new.

However, the original report of the CCTV is somehow exaggerated and provided with wrong information. It was later revealed that the station in question was actually Kyū-Shirataki Station, two stops away from Kami-Shirataki Station and that there are actually 10 other passengers of the train belonging to the same class as the girl.

Anyway, whether it is the Kyū-Shirataki or the Kami-Shirataki Station and whether there was only one or eleven students taking the train, it was still an inspiring story. The point is that the Japanese government went an extra mile by not canceling the train until her graduation.