Wife and I were going home from an onsen trip in Matsuyama and took the express to Okayama. There were a lot of people going home from New Years, so a lot of large luggage.
Problem is that JR Shikoku does not offer much in terms of luggage space on their trains, so most people were occupying rows of seats just for suitcases.
My wife and I decided to do the logical thing: Turn a seat around, store our luggage in the space created between the two seatbacks, and then we of course placed ourselves in the seat facing backward, so that any passenger gertting onboard would be able to sit facing forward.
Some other people saw this and did the same. This freed up at least 6 seats in the non-reserved car.
But then we got a huge scolding from the staff, which demanded the seats being turned back with no reason given other than “all seats should face forwards”.
I don’t get it. Is it a safety issue? It just seems so stupid to take up multiply rows with luggage when you can create a perfectly good place to store it.