Takayama Shinkansen high season

I am arriving with my family at KIX next Thursday. I have not reserved our seats to go to Takayama on Saturday, Oct., 17 (we will spend Thursday night and Friday night in Koyasan). My understanding is that I can make reservations for the Shinkansen at KIX when we arrive, but I am concerned that because it is high season for Takayama that there will be no available seats. Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated.

Hi,

I'm not sure if you mean a Shinkansen all the way to Takayama, because there is none. The fastest way is to take the Haruka Ltd. Express from KIX to Kyoto, take the Shinkansen to Nagoya and then take a Ltd. Exp. Hida train to Takayama. You can make your reservations at the JR ticket counter at KIX for all of these trains but, depending on the time that you arrive at, you might not need them. The Haruka usually isn't that crowded. Getting reservations for the shinkansen is always a good idea, though.

If you want an overview of the trip, use http://www.hyperdia.com/ and go from Kansai Airport to Takayama. It should outline the costs and which trains to take for you.

Do you think there wil still be seats available on the Hida Express train from Nagoya to Takayama?

The very busy time in Takayama will be this weekend as it is the Autumn Takayama Festival on the 9th and 10th October.

We didn't have any seat reservation problems third week of March this year. We did everything on arrival at KIX i.e. got our JR Railpass and reserved all seats for immediate travel from Kansai to Takayama ( Haruka / Hikari / Wide View Hida)

I checked cyberstation

http://www.jr.cyberstation.ne.jp

and found that all Hida limited express from Nagoya to Takayama have many vacant seats on 17th Oct.

There might be many less free seats when they arrive and book.

As an example, I looked at reserving six seats Takayama to Toyama on the Hida this week and only three spare seats. But, in the non-reserved car there were more than 50 empty seats. The Nagoya-Takayama is more popular/busy, but has twice as many express trains. I have not had a problem with space on that train to Takayama (yet) in the trips I've done over the past couple of years. Heading back to Nagoya tends to be more crowded.