In December 2015, posts on Japanese Twitter began describing a remote station whose only regular passenger was a high school girl, and which would close as she graduated. One roundup of the reactions summed up the mood: somehow, it was making people tear up.
One user praised JR Hokkaido for standing by every passenger's life.
On January 8, 2016, China's state broadcaster CCTV posted the story on Facebook. It was shared nearly 90,000 times, and news sites around the world retold it.
Some details grew in the retelling. In some versions, she was the only person on the train, though other students were already aboard.
But the heart of the story was true. For three years, a small station in the forest had one regular passenger, and the people around her wanted it to stay until she graduated.