Anime: Tetsuko no Tabi 4b5s1i

* Based on a seinen manga by Ikki.

A manga artist is asked by her boss to accompany him and a travel-writer on various train trips around Japan and draw a manga about it.

The travel-writer turns out to be a super train-otaku who has vast knowledge of the train network, but also micro-manages all their trips, planning every detail down to the second. He cares mostly about following the schedule and successfully achieving his planned goals, e.g. visiting all stations on a line in an unusual order to accommodate infrequent trains. The mangaka does not really care about trains; she is cynical, sarcastic, and rather lazy. She mainly just looks forward to the next eki-ben. This difference in personality and interests inevitably lead to bizarre conflicts.

— written by Miles Bader (edited)

Note: The anime is actually completely non-fictional — the creator really did go on all these trips, and the manga simply records what happened, thus presenting various out of the way and interesting Japanese train lines and stations.