A rail company in Japan has apologised after one of its trains departed 20 seconds early.

Management on the Tsukuba Express line between Tokyo and the city of Tsukuba say they "sincerely apologise for the inconvenience" caused.

In a statement, the company said the train had been scheduled to leave at 9:44:40 local time but left at 9:44:20.

The mistake happened because staff had not checked the timetable, the company statement said.

"The crew did not sufficiently check the departure time and performed the departure operation," it said.

It added that no customers had complained about the early departure from Minami Nagareyama Station, which is just north of Tokyo.

The Tsukuba Express line takes passengers from Akihabara in eastern Tokyo to Tsukuba in about 45 minutes.

It is rare for trains in Japan, which has one of the world's most reliable railways, to depart at a different time to the one scheduled.

The country's Tokaido line, which runs from Tokyo to the city of Kobe, is by far the world's busiest and carries nearly 150 million passengers a year.

Impressed railway users worldwide tweeted the story to their local train operators - particularly in Britain, where rail services are often delayed

Thanks for the information.

My dad opened a business two years ago.He had a lot of information and new strategies on the market, that not all of other business partners had. He uses Long Tails that allows the company to realize significant profits by selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. This idea was so good that he gained a lot of money, just in the first month.In my opinion, everything is hard, especially to start a new business, but all you have to do, is to believe and to work hard.