|
Riding the Rails (and busses and ferries) in JapanAs the home of the bullet train and one of the world's best rail systems, it is inevitable you will spend time on the Japanese rail system. It is efficient, on-time and easy to use but if you plan to spend time getting around the country on the Shinkansen it is often expensive. The train system is augmented by a good intercity bus system so that you can get to any main attraction using public transportation. The major question is whether you should buy a pass to ride the train. Will a pass stretch your "yen to travel" or are you likely to travel by bus, ferry or other transportation and not see any great savings with the pass? Should You Buy a Japan Rail Pass?The current rules state that you can buy a Japan Rail Pass if you are a foreign visitor who will be visiting Japan for more than 15 but less than 90 days or a Japanese citizen married to a foreigner outside the country or Japanese citizen living permanently outside Japan. If you are staying for a longer period of time such as a student on a visa or are in Japan for business, you can not use a Japan Rail Pass. continued....
The first thing you should understand about the Japanese rail system is that it is privately owned. A collection of companies with the designation Japan Rail serve various areas of the nation but throughout the region JR has competition, usually traveling on slightly different paths to the same ultimate locations. So when you consider a pass, be aware that the lines you may want to take may not be owned by the company who issued the pass. It is also worth noting that in addition to extensive rail service, Japan has great intercity bus connections. We traveled from Hiroshima to the shrine of Izumo on the Sea of Japan by bus because it was the best way (cost and time) to get there. On the journey, we enjoyed a "chauffered" ride through verdant Japanese country side with the ability to rubberneck at flyfishermen and egrets and traditional Japanese farm homes. It is important to note that the Japan Rail Passes are for a choice of 7, 14 or 21 days and let you get seats on regular trains and Shinkansen (Bullet Trains) that stop at all the stations along the way. We knew our schedule would have us spending the first 3 nights in Tokyo, the next 3 nights in Kyoto and then 4 nights in Hiroshima. Because we were not going to do a lot of traveling by train during that period, the math cost didn't make sense for us. We priced the cost of rail and air travel between Tokyo and Kyoto and then from Kyoto to Hiroshima. Because we would only use the pass for those two trips, it was easy for us to compare prices and conclude that we wouldn't save anything using the pass while being precluded from using the Bullet Trains that had the fewest stops. If you are going to do a lot of travel by train over a few days, then you may have some benefit. An easy way, by comparison, to save a few dollars is to choose to buy UNRESERVED seats on the Shinkansen. The Shinkansen trains have two different types of cars: Reserved and Unreserved. If you look up the fares, you will see that there two charges are combined for the total ticket price: the basic fare and the reserved seat charge. That cost is reduced by 510 yen butwith the savings, you give up the guarantee of a seat and during peak travel times, there is standing room only on the unreserved cars. Here is current information about the difference in costs between reserved and non-reserved seats. We opted to use non-reserved seating on both our trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima and from Himeji back to Tokyo. On the trip to Hiroshima, we stood in the back of the car until passengers got off in Osaka (one stop). On the return trip, we road from Himeji to Kyoto (3 stops) before we able to grab seats and wondered if the small savings justified the time we spent on our feet. There are other alternatives to the Japan Rail Pass which may be worth investigating:
|