Yukari Takeoka obsessed over the carry case for her dog when she rode a Shinkansen on a trip to her parents’ home in Yamagata Prefecture.

The 49-year-old company employee who lives in Tokyo was so nervous she could not even take in the scenery through the window.

“The only thing I thought about at the time was not causing trouble to other passengers,” Takeoka recalled.

She had started taking her dog to tourist spots around eight years ago, and since she does not own a car, she relies on trains and planes for their journeys.

But airplanes did not provide her with a solution because pets are supposed to go in cargo compartments during flights, meaning she could not see her dog for hours on end.

Takeoka once watched as her pet shivered in the carry case while she was waiting in front of an airport’s luggage check-in counter.

“Traveling should be fun, but I realized it causes my pet to feel fear,” she said.

For a while, Takeoka stopped going on trips with her dog entirely.

But in May, East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) ran a trial Shinkansen program where passengers could ride with their dogs on the seats next to them.

Soon enough, Takeoka and her pet Chihuahua found themselves lined up on the platform for a trip on the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line at Ueno Station along with the other 34 passengers and 20 dogs, including a Chihuahua, Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and bulldog.

The participants and pets sat on seats covered with special antibacterial sheets. Takeoka told her dog, “This is pleasant,” and took a photo of them riding alongside each other.

Her pet looked out at the townscape through the window and slept on her lap during the 50-minute trip to Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture.

“I used to want trains to arrive at destinations as quickly as possible and had no good memories of our outings,” Takeoka said. “I appreciate the operator allowing us to ride together.”

JR East is now considering introducing this as a new Shinkansen package that would allow passengers to travel with their pet dogs in adjacent seats.

The company is mulling whether to introduce the offer amid prolonged sluggish ridership brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Canines normally cannot leave their portable cages on trains.

A century ago, dogs were seen as being “part of baggage.” A train schedule description dating back to 1899 states that dogs “should be put in cases to be transported on carriages for train crew, not passenger cars.”

But a day may soon come when they move up train car classes.

Pets other than guide dogs are supposed to be housed in cages with a total length, width and height of up to 120 centimeters on the trains of JR companies and major private railway operators.

The total weight of the animals and their cages must be no more than 10 kilograms. Boarding with the cases costs passengers a fee on top of their own fare.

Shino Furukawa, 29, who is responsible for business planning at a JR East group enterprise called JR East Start Up Co., said the lingering effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic are behind the decision to consider the pet ride-along service.

Considering that many people got pets during the pandemic, Furukawa and her colleagues thought of introducing a framework for passengers to travel with their pets.

Furukawa said they decided on dogs because sightseeing destinations have already begun to court dog owners through new offerings.

The idea has proved controversial within the company.

It sparked fierce debate among employees, so special arrangements had to be made with many departments for things like cleaning the train cars and adjusting schedules.

Pet ride packages would be offered on special trains, but some challenges remain over the plan. Some passengers have expressed concerns about animal allergies.

The company is therefore considering an option of separating pets and their owners from the train cars of ordinary passengers.

As the cleaning procedures will take more time, only a limited number of the special rides for pets would be made available each year.

There were no significant differences reported after the May pilot project about the amount of animal hair or other airborne pollutants between pet-friendly cars and ordinary carriages. And no one reported any bad animal odors.

“We will be further sorting out possible problems in the hope of making trains friendlier to pets,” Furukawa said.