Submitted by Jason H., who says:

Hi! I’m currently living in Japan for a year as an exchange student, and I’ve come across many train maps here (of course), and I actually originally found your website from the JR West system map you posted many years ago. (It has been updated, with a few route changes but also more colors if you want to check it again).

Here is a picture I took of a map from inside the trains on the JR West Kakogawa Line, a suburban/rural line around Kobe and Osaka. I apologize that it’s only in Japanese, but the pictures are pretty self-explanatory and surprisingly detailed. It looks like it could be for tourism, but all the sights pictured are small local temples, official city buildings, and the like, with very few proper tourist sights. I don’t know if this map is that helpful, especially since seemed like almost all locals taking the train, but I like it and whoever made it seemed to have fun while doing so.

Transit Maps says:

I don’t think it really matters who the target market for this map is, Jason, it’s just delightful to see a bit of whimsy in transit map design. I’m particularly fond of the adorable little train heading along the line. For a smaller, semi-rural branch line like this, the lighter tone is totally appropriate and the whole thing still works perfectly well for its intended wayfinding purposes. The line is presented as a clear, straight line and interchanges with other lines are indicated clearly, with connections to other JR lines at either end, as well as to the Hōjō Line and the Shintetsu Ao Line at Ao station (the seventh station from the left).

If you look closely, you can see that there used to be another line heading towards the bottom of the map from Yakujin station (fourth from the left), but this has now been covered or painted over. This was the Miki Line, which shut down in 2008 — suggesting that this map has been in use for a good number of years, with neat alterations like this keeping it up to date.