u/POPstationinacan

Here's a random assortment of pictures I took during my one-night visit to Tokushima last summer. Tokushima is probably best known as the birthplace of the Awa Odori dance festival. It's held during Obon in August, but even outside that, the Awa Odori Kaikan museum organizes daily performances (audiences can participate too!).

Outside of the festival stuff, it's perhaps not the most exciting city. There's a cable car to the top of Mt. Bizan which offers a nice view over the city. The animation studio Ufotable has an office in the city, so there's a lot of Fate and Demon Slayer (and more) posters and references around town; they also have a Ufotable cafe and cinema. You can also take a day trip to see the Naruto Whirlpools from a platform under the Naruto Bridge. I stopped there on my way from Kobe to Tokushima, the highway buses stop at the Naruto lookout place on request.

I recently visited the Finnish Railway Museum, which has a large number of old Finnish trains on display. Here's a few pictures I took there - unfortunately the exhibit halls are dimly lit so the photos aren't the best. I've included the train models and build years in the captions.

Temiya Line is a closed branch line in the city of Otaru in the north of Japan. It opened in 1880 and closed in 1985, though passenger services ended twenty years earlier in 1965. It branched from the Hakodate Main Line at the Minami-Otaru station, ran along the main line for about a kilometer and then continued towards the port. Here's an old map from Wikipedia; Temiya Line is the dead-end line that runs north from the middle of the map.

More than half of the old line still exists today. The beginning of the line can be seen around Minami-Otaru, though that part is off limits for visitors. The part that runs through the city is available to the public as a rail trail type of thing, and it includes commemorative plaques with information about the history of the line. The old yard / freight terminal at the end of the line is now a museum with lots of old trains and other vehicles, but unfortunately it was closed when I was in town so I didn't get a chance to visit.

These are my pictures of the Tsuruga Port Railway, a branch line to a port on the Sea of Japan. It's a roughly 2-kilometer long branch from the current Tsuruga station, where it connects to the Hokuriku Main Line. From what I found online, the line was officially closed in 2019 though it had been more or less unused for several years before that. Either way, the tracks are still mostly there (a few sections have been removed) and you can also see lots of related infrastructure such as signals.

Picture 7 shows a small diesel locomotive which was parked in the abandoned yard, but I found a tweet from November 2025 which shows it was removed - it's going back to use!

Pictures 8-10 show a preserved KiHa 28 railcar, serving as a tourist attraction also near the old yard. The remaining pictures are from the Tsuruga Railway museum, a small but free museum a short walk away from the abandoned tracks.

You can read more about the line's history here and here, for example. Here is a link to Google maps, where you can see the abandoned yard.

edit: I also took some pictures of the current Tsuruga station, you can see them here

Sauce: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/persu-the-rain-drop-car-31151.html