「がんばれ東北！ガンバレ函館！頑張れ日本！」
The banner was put up in order to support the victims of the earthquake, and this campaign had been conducted around many places in hakodate area such as train station and wakoビル(see the links)
In this katakana sample, ｶﾞﾝﾊﾞﾚ was used as an emphasis. As the banner's goal is to support the victims, the phrase "cheer up!" was written in all three forms (hiragana, kanji, and katakana) to give more impression and emphasis.
富良野美瑛 ノロッコ 号
The train connects Biei and Furano, center spots of Hukkaido island. ”ノロッコ” は a combination word of のろい (very slow) and トロッコ (an observation car). Since this train has a purpose of enjoying a scenery and fresh air of Hokkaido, as the word is meant to be, ”ノロッコ” must be used as an emphasis.
It is very interestingly written since ノ looks like an alphabet letter "J" and ロ looks like "O" - it almost looks like an English word.
Even a Japanese person said
"各車両のサイドにはシンボルマーク
カタカナでノロッコをデザインして有りますが、
外人には解読不可能でしょう。
私も一瞬考えました。" on his blog that it also took a moment for him to figure out the symbol/word.
While its roundish shape contradicts with sharp and straight lines of common katakana words, ”ノロッコ” might be written in such manners to symbolize and emphasize its meaning of "slow observation car".
