Japan's transport ministry will call on the operators of bullet train services to make their carriages more accessible for people using wheelchairs.

The ministry has decided to revise guidelines for public transportation, following discussions by a panel of officials from railway companies and advocacy groups for people with disabilities.

Japanese transportation officials say that a defective installation of a cable led to an accident involving a driverless train that went in the wrong direction.

The Japan Transport Safety Board on Thursday released intermediate findings from its investigation into last year's incident on the Yokohama Seaside Line in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Seventeen passengers were injured and the operator later found a broken circuit linked to the directional control system.

One of the problems Japan is facing is the problem of train gropers, who typically take advantage of the fact that Japan’s trains can get insanely crowded and they use that to their advantage to molest and grope their victims. Unfortunately, there is not much one can do about it as trains can be too crowded to correctly identify the groper.

Plus, due to the nature of trains, the groper can always easily hop off the next station and disappear. However, Japan Railways (JR East) has come up with a new app that will help the victims out. Whenever the victim thinks that they might have been groped, all they need to do is launch the app and tap the button, after which it will send a message to the train’s conductor.

A railway operator on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido has started a service offering tourists views of ice floes that wash up on the shores of Okhotsk.

The first train of the season departed from Abashiri Station on the JR Senmo Line after a ceremony on Saturday. About 100 people were on board.

A South Korean woman has visited the station in Tokyo where her son was killed 19 years ago while attempting to save a man who had fallen onto the tracks.

The 26-year-old student, Lee Su-hyon, and a Japanese photographer jumped from the platform at JR Shin-Okubo station to try to save the man on January 26, 2001. All three were hit by a train and killed.

The last train schedules in and around the Japanese capital will be extended by up to two hours during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Some events at the 2020 Games will end after 11 p.m. As a measure to allow spectators to get home easily from venues, the Tokyo Metropolitan government, the Olympic organizing committee and 19 railway operators agreed to extend the train service hours.