And Away We Go

@Daroru: I think it was there either left over from or in preparation for some sort of campaign to boost ridership. I noticed what looked like equipment for serving beer at the other end of the car, and the lanterns were all from Asahi Beer.

This line does stuff like that sometimes. They're even getting ready to have their third English conversation run. They pay some foreigners to ride the train on a special run, charge extra for the Japanese passengers, and probably have some other stuff planned for the trip.

They're hard up for riders, and just the local resident traffic alone won't cut it so they have to drum up passengers who ride for tourism, sight-seeing, special events and whatnot.