Station names (which are almost always in kanji) are usually repeated in hiragana on trains, buses and railway platforms in order to help with reading them, but today I noticed that on some JR East trains the name of the next station is written in katakana, for example: ケタカマクラ. (I took a photo, but this subreddit doesn’t allow attachments.)
Is it normal practice to use katakana as furigana? Any idea why JR East made this unusual decision?
