JRP (21 days) or alternative?

Hi everyone,

In september, we're going tot Japan for 3 weeks with a group of 7 persons. We will be travelling by train. Schedule is as follows:

1. Tokyo
2. Tokyo
3. Tokyo - Mt. Fuji
4. Region of Mt. Fuji
5. Mt. Fuji - Kyoto
6. Kyoto
7. Kyoto
8. Kyoto (daytrip to Nara)
9. Kyoto - Hiroshima (stop at Himeji)
10. Hiroshima (trip to Miyajima)
11. Hiroshima - Osaka
12. Osaka
13. Osaka - Takayama
14. Takayama
15. Takayama - Kanazawa
16. Kanazawa
17. Kanazawa - Tokyo
18. Tokyo
19. Tokyo - Nikko
20. Nikko - Tokyo
21. Tokyo (daytrip to Kamakura)
22. Tokyo (departure)

Would a Japan Railpass of 21 days be the most beneficial (economicaly) way to travel? Or would it be cheaper to buy separate train tickets? Or are there other alternatives?

We asked this question at several people who have been there but we get different answers. One says the JPR is the best deal, while the other says the JPR wouldn't be a good deal with our schedule.

Any thoughts?

Let's put in this way. Your furthest travel is from Tokyo to Hiroshima is about 11,000 yen.
The 21 Day JR Pass is about 70,000 yen. So you have got to make this 5 hour trip about 7 times just to get your money worth.
In short, I do not see how this would be worth your money.

Furthermore, your travel pace is slow-normal. Others with a 21 Day pass would pop by Kyushu or northern Chugoku/Kansai. Perhaps even make frequent day trips out of Tokyo to Nikko, Kamakura, Karuizawa that you do not seem to be doing.

So in short, single trip tickets are best. If not, do cut one day out of any city that has more that two days. Cut half a day out of every city that is two days. Use this time to travel more extensively. (I am not against slower paced travelers. Everyone has their style. Just talking about making the Pass worth the money you pay for it.)

One recommended alternative is to purchase a Tokyo to Hiroshima Ticket. Single ticket. Then purchase the shinkansen ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto, Kyoto to Shin-Osaka, and Shin-Osaka to Himeji and then to Hiroshima. If you travel long distances (Tokyo to Hiroshima) you can get on and off at stations (every 100km or so let's you get on and off another calendar day) along the route for no extra cost (same basic ticket) but would have to pay for the shinkansen ticket along the way (multiple shinkansen ticket)

This helps save some cost but doesnt help if you want to go to Hiroshima first. You have to stop by Kyoto and Osaka for a few days and cut those days. Also doesnt work for Kanazawa as it is a detour to get there (not along the Tokaido line)

When trying to figure out if you need a pass, the first thing I like to do is look at the fares on hyperdia.

When you say Mt. Fuji to Kyoto, are you talking Hakone area or the 5 Lakes area? For this example I am going to use Hakone.

Hakone-Yumoto to Kyoto: 12,080 yen with reserved seat
Kyoto to Himeji via shinkansen 5270 w/reserved seat (You can get between Kyoto and HImeji for 2270 yen via Special Rapid, but it will take you nearly twice as long.)
Himeji to Hiroshima via shinkansen 8290 yen with reserved seat
Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka via shinkansen 10,230 yen with reserved seat

This is 1 week and is 35870 vs a 1 week pass for 29,110.
Osaka to Takayama 10,600 yen with reserved seats
Takayama to Kanazawa is 6650 with reserved seats (though you might do better via bus...)
Kanazawa to Tokyo 14,120 with reserved seats

This totals: 31370 so if paying out of pocket you would be at 67,240 yen and for a 2 week pass would be 46,390 yen and you would have 1 day left, so that you could move your Kamakura trip from day 21 to day 18 and have it covered as well.

As for whether it is worth it to do the full 3 week pass for 59,350 or 12,960 more, you would need to calculate out if your costs on days 1-4 and days 19-22 will be greater than 12,960. I sort of suspect not. You can go roundtrip on the NEX for 4000, and private lines are easy for Hakone and Nikko. (again, I'm not quite sure where you are going near Fuji, so you would need to calculate it out.) I would also look into maybe whether some other sort of Kanto/JR East Flex/ something else would cover your remaining days.

So if it were me, I would get a 2 week pass. There could be cheaper buses between say Takayama and Kanazawa, even if you take the Special Rapid to Himeji and use a bus from Takayama to Kanazawa you currently are 20,850 yen ahead with the 2 week and there is no way you will not be 10,000 yen ahead vs out of pocket.

If you can swap Kanazawa and Takayama, This might work:

One of the various Fuji passes for Mount Fuji. There are several flavors, depending on what you are doing. The busses around Mount Fuji, and some of the train is NOT covered by a JR Pass:

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e6905.html

Just take a discount airline from Tokyo to Kyoto, or, buy a discount Shinkansen Ticket. Some of the discount airlines have one way tickets for less than 4,000 yen.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2364.html
http://www.jrtours.co.jp/kodama/en/?scid=jtt_kepEng001

In Kyoto, most of your transportation to attractions will be by the bus system, which again, is NOT covered by a JR Pass.

Buy a 5 day JR Hiroshima Kansai Pass (13,000 yen), activate it on Day 10, use it to go to Hiroshima, Miyajima Island, and back to Osaka:

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2361_kansai_hiroshima.html

Just pay for a Limited Express ticket from Osaka to Kanawawa(7650 yen looked up on Hyperdia).

Take a Nohi bus from Kanawawa, thourgh Shirakawa-go to Takayama (3390 yen), and then take another Nohi bus from Takayama to Tokyo (6690 yen):

http://www.nouhibus.co.jp/english/

This is your transportation between major cities.

This may give you ideas on what you can do. You may want tickets from the airports, and an IC card. I would suggest going to the transportation page here at Japan Guide for more help.

I hope this gives you some ideas.

Oops, I forgot to mentions Nikko. It is also covered by many different "flavors" of passes, depending on what you want to do.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2358_002.html

I would recommend going to one of the Onsens north of Nikko. The last time I went, I stayed in Kinogawa. The next time, I want to go in February, so that I can stay in Yushishigawa during the winter festival.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3875.html
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3882.html

Some of the different tickets include passes to attractions. Are you planning to go to Edo Wonderland? Since there are different tickets, you need to talk to the people you are going with, and pick the one that best fits your group.

Good luck with your planning.

You should also look at travel times. You can get between Tokyo and Kyoto by night bus for a lot less than train fare, but not everyone wants to take a night bus. There are certainly times where long distance buses are faster and better than JR, I took the bus from Tsuroka to Yamagata (and then did a side trip to Zao onsen) and the bus was quite nice and much faster between Tsuroka and Yamagata then trying to get to Yamagata by train.

I personally don't tend to want to spend forever sitting on a bus or a train unless that is one of the shorter ways to get between two places. I am willing to pay more for a faster trip.

A few of the ways mentioned by ebaychuck311 are slower than the equivalent ways via JR. If you plan to fly, you will need to loop back to Haneda from the Fuji area which will take you around 90 minutes. The special Puratto Kodama ticket is discounted by a few thousand yen but also involves taking the Kodama shinkansen, which is slower than the Hikari by around 30-40 minutes. I'm also not sure you can buy one from Odawara. The actual website is not loading but in older materials Shizuoka is the nearest station from which you can depart.

It's an hour+ longer by Nohi bus from Takayama to Shinjuku than if you take the train back to Nagoya and transfer to a Hikari shinkansen for Tokyo. This includes a 20 minute transfer time where you could walk around and look for food. The Nohi bus takes ~ 5.5 hours.

Using the prices listed and assuming you are taking a Kodama shinkansen from Shizuoka and not including any possible fares to Shizuoka I get a total of 38,130 or 8260 yen less vs a 2 week pass.

One way you might save money and not spend longer times traveling is maybe post Fuji fly to Hiroshima. Pay out of pocket for the Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka leg, go to Kyoto and start the rail pass the day you leave Kyoto and then either go to Kanazawa (6900), take the train to Takayama (6650) then Takayama to Tokyo (14,710) == 28260 and 2 pass days left, or heck you could just do everything out of pocket maybe? You can travel at the end of June on JAL for around 10,000 yen from Haneda to Hiroshima so discount carriers would presumably be less. It's 10230 from Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka, or do the 5 day Sanyo pass for 13,000 then and pay out of pocket for the other fares?

The nice thing about paying out of pocket is you can use the Mizuho and Nozomi (It's also a plus of the Sanyo Pass.)

You've had some great advice.
The constant theme, and my advice to you, would be to spend 30 mins on Hyperdia and put together a spreadsheet of individual journey times and costs.
Then, look at various 7 and 14 day periods within the whole itinerary, and add up the travel costs for those, comparing to the cost of rail passes.
By doing that you will not only get a proper idea of the best routes to take but you will also get an idea of whether there's a 7 or 14 day period when a rail pass might pay off, and whether you might want to rearrange some of your itinerary to fit that.
On a long holiday it's not uncommon for it to be best to have a rail pass for the periods of heavy travelling and to buy individual tickets for the periods where you're only taking short journeys or are staying put in one place.
It won't take long, give it a go...

Thank you all for the great advice! I really appreciate it!

I calculated the single ticket fares on Hyperdia. Total was 375 euro.
JPR pass for 3 weeks is 472 euro. So the JPR pass for 3 weeks isn't a good deal in our case.

I will discus the advices with my travel companions so we can calculate the most beneficial formula.

Again, thanks for the very usefull advices and efforts. This site has been a great help so far with other things as well.

Not sure why JH got the Tokyo to Hiroshima price so wrong, but it is way more than Y11k. Maybe he was looking at Kyoto to Hiroshima.

You might look at a 14 day pass and reshuffling, but if you are on a budget, carefully check the pricing and routing.

http://japancustomtours.co.nz/railpass.htm

I'd look at a 14 day period of travel. It looks like if you add one day in Tokyo and delete one day somewhere else, you can use a 14 day JR pass.

Do not use 2x 7 day passes, that will cost the same as a 21 day pass.

Wait a minute!

Total was 375 euro.
JPR pass for 3 weeks is 472 euro.

I just make a quick calculation on "Calculator" app on my Mac (sorry not using Excel spreadsheet), and the sum of your itinerary was 79086 yen. I included Otsuki-Shinyokohama-Kyoto route and Tokyo-Utsunomiya shinkansen, so, it could be somewhat cheaper, but still I believe it was much higher than your calculation of 375 euros (47150 yen). I doubt you might not add the express fee (for Shinkansen and other limited express trains).

I did a rough guessimate using the nearest 1,000 rounding up/down yen per trip. And I came out with around 70,000 also.