This story is another example of how mismanaged the Japanese rail system has become. It would be cheaper, and <i>more environmentally friendly</i>, to pick this girl up in a Escalade limousine, provide a tutor to review her lesson plan, and then have the car idle in the parking lot all day.<p>We can have a conversation about how changing demographics have created this situation. Whether or not the urbanization of Japanese society is a good thing. On the future role of trains in Japan. Why Japanese are giving up on sex and baby making (kinda hard to maintain and justify an infrastructure built for 150 million people when your pop. is shrinking at 0.7% annually).<p>But this story should not be lauded, as it is a symptom of the sickness of their society today.