Maximizing JR Pass and transport cost

Hi all,

I will be travelling for 11 days to multiple city, inbound and outbound from Tokyo.

The plan is roughly as follow:
Day 1: arriving at Tokyo
Day 2-5: Kyoto, Osaka and surrounding area
Day 6: pampering myself at Kinosaki Onsen
Day 7: returning to Tokyo, stopover at Nagoya
Day 8-11: Tokyo, Hakone, Yokohama

I have some questions and keen to hear advise:
1. Kinosaki Onsen will take 2.5 hr back to Kyoto. I was thinking to stopover some places along the way to Tokyo and Nagoya could be a good place for tasting hitsumabushi and visit Nagoya castle. After Nagoya, is it still possible to stop over at Gifu? Is there place of attraction near Gifu station?

2. I will be activating JR Pass on day 2 to day 7. For day 8-11, is there any pass or special tickets to reduce the travel cost?

3. I will be departing from Narita. Is there any special pass/rate for N'ex?

Thank you for the suggestions!

Besides the JR Pass there is a hakone pass that let's you travel from Tokyo to Hakone and back plus do the Hakone cablecar-tramcar-ropeway-ferry loop.

There is the Narita express but it is going to expire. Or perhaps it has expired already!

Within Kyoto and Osaka, you can use the JR Pass for JR Trains and JR Buses but certain trains and buses are non-JR. Thus, it really depends on your itinerary. As a rush traveller I use the Kyoto bus pass 3 days, and made it worth by the second day.

From Kinosaki to Kyoto and then to Tokyo takes a long time, e.g. 6 hours. Stopping at Nagoya makes things even worse. Choose Nagoya or Gifu not both

Hihi,

2. I will be activating JR Pass on day 2 to day 7. For day 8-11, is there any pass or special tickets to reduce the travel cost?

For Hakone, you can use the Hakone Free Pass if you're intending to do the round course.

Within Tokyo it's pretty economical to just buy the tickets as and when you're going - unless you're going to a lot of different places at once, the metro passes usually dont pay off.

3. I will be departing from Narita. Is there any special pass/rate for N'ex?For Narita Express

If you're going to and from to Narita, you can use NEX ticket "http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/nex_round.html". That's the only current promotion that's available - but it only starts on March 14th.