Around 2:55 pm on June 30th, trains in Ibaraki were halted for nearly two hours. Some trains were as much as an hour and forty-five minutes late affecting approximately 2,600 communters.
The reason? Snakes. A 1 meter long dead snake was found in the overhead wiring. In the same station another snake caused a 2 hour blackout.
A representative from JR East was reported as saying that they weren’t sure if there was a nest of snakes somewhere in the station, but because there have been blackouts on consecutive days, they were going to have to think of something to do about it.
The culprit was a Japanese rat snake similar to the one shown above.