while some limit women-only cars to rapid service trains, as they tend to be more crowded and have relatively longer distances between stops. But in general, the policy is effective only on weekdays, excluding holidays. Platforms and train doors are marked with signs indicating boarding areas for the cars, and the days and times when the cars are women-only. Though intended to be exclusive to women, most train operators in Japan allow male elementary school pupils, disabled persons, and their assistants to board women-only cars. Groping in crowded trains has been a problem in Japan: according to National Police Agency and Ministry of Justice, the number of reported indecent assault in subway carriages in nationwide Japan between 2005 and 2014 ranges from 283 to 497 cases each year. The police and railway companies responded with poster campaigns to raise awareness and with tougher sentences, but incidence continues to increase. In 2004, the Tokyo police reported a threefold increase in reported cases of groping on public transportation over eight years. In December 2000, Keio Electric Railway, which operates trains between Tokyo and its suburbs, offered women-only cars late at night on a trial basis, in response to complaints about groping by drunken men during the bōnenkai party season. Keio began running trains with late-night women-only cars on a full-time basis in March 2001. In July 2001, JR East began a similar service on the Saikyo Line, which connects Tokyo with Saitama Prefecture and had become notorious for gropers because of crowding and longer distances between stops. The following year, the service was extended to evening rush hour. In July 2002, JR West became the third company in Japan to run trains with women-only cars, and the JR West trains in Osaka became the first to offer women-only cars during morning rush hour. The same year, two more Osaka-area railways, Hankyu Railway and Keihan Railway, added women-only cars to their limited express trains, and Hankyu became the first company to run women-only cars all day long. Other Osaka-area companies followed suit, including Osaka Municipal Subway, whose Midosuji Line, which carries passengers at as much as 160% capacity, had a reputation for having the worst groping problem in all of Japan. Tokyo-area companies resisted the change because of logistical difficulties and fear of overcrowding in mixed-gender cars, but in 2005 they introduced women-only cars during rush hour, after awareness campaigns and tougher sentencing