Home/Chiba/Choshi/Choshi Electric Railway

Choshi Electric Railway

Published: Aug 11, 2026

Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Choshi Electric Railwaynure-senbeilocal railwayInuboChoshi

Representative image — not a photograph of this location.

The Choshi Electric Railway runs 6.4 kilometres from Choshi to the easternmost point of the Kanto region, on rolling stock that other companies retired decades ago, through cabbage fields and fishing town backstreets. It has been on the edge of closure for most of its existence, and it survives by selling rice crackers.

That is not a joke. In 1995 a local senbei maker taught the railway how to produce nure-senbei, soft soy-soaked crackers, for nothing. When the company hit a cash crisis again in 2006, the accounting manager put a note on the website — please buy crackers, we need to repair the trains — and fifteen thousand orders came in from across Japan. The railway is now, by its own cheerful admission, a confectionery business with a railway attached, and it has leaned into it with increasingly self-deprecating product names. Riding it is a small act of participation.

Essential Information

Opening Hours

Trains run through the day | Station shops keep daytime hours

Closed: Operates year-round

Entrance Fee

Komawari Tegata one-day pass ¥1,000 adults, ¥500 children | Ordinary fares by distance | Nure-senbei priced separately

Best Season

Year-round | 1 January for the first sunrise at Inubosaki

Visit Duration

Half a day for the line and Inubosaki

Getting There

Access Information

From JR Choshi Station, adjoining the JR platform. The line runs 6.4 km to Tokawa via Inubo, the station for Inubosaki lighthouse. A Komawari Tegata one-day pass covering the railway and local buses costs ¥1,000 for adults and ¥500 for children. Nure-senbei and railway goods are sold at Inubo Station and at the company's own shop.

Insider Guide

Premium

**Buy the crackers. That is the point.** The railway's survival has depended on nure-senbei sales twice. Inubo Station has the largest counter and you can grill your own there. **The one-day pass covers buses too.** ¥1,000 for the Komawari Tegata, which includes the whole line plus Chiba Kotsu and Chibako buses — useful because Choshi's other sights are spread out. **Get off at Inubo for the lighthouse and Kannonzaki.** Inubosaki is the first place on Honshu to see the sunrise on New Year's Day, and the station is a few minutes from it. **The rolling stock is the attraction.** Cars here came second-hand from Tokyo subway and other private lines decades ago and are kept running well past normal retirement. Look at the interiors. **Read the product names.** The company sells its own financial precariousness as branding, with items named after its own near-bankruptcy. It is genuinely funny and it is also how the trains keep moving.

View on Google Maps