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What is the best Pass 2019/6/23 09:02
Dear all,
I plan to visit Tokyo in Jun 29 - July 3. I will stay all the days in Tokyo but I also want to visit Osaka, Kyoto and Nara in some day but not overnight there.
Please advise what pass that mught suitable for me.
Thank you very much
by Windy (guest)  

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/23 10:03
If you will be staying in Tokyo for 5 days (I guess the first and last days might be just for traveling to/from Tokyo, so actually it will be 3 days) and do day trips to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara (each will require at least 1 full day assuming you must do 6 hours of round trip train travel from Tokyo and will have 6-8 hours in each city), the only practical pass is the Japan Rail Pass 7 days. Other passes do not cover Tokyo/Kansai Shinkansen travel. But honestly, I think you might better consider staying in Kansai area to do these three cities.
by frog1954 rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/24 00:31
Hello friend, for 5 days of visit I think it is better to visit Tokyo only so you can get a good feeling of the whole city. going to several cities can be bad if you consider the time to go to them
by car201 rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/24 02:15
Your plan is certainly not doable. Either you stay in Tokyo (and with only side trips to nearby places such as Yokohama if what you want is to try many cities) or you stay in Osaka (so you can try Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara, but definitely not Tokyo).
by JPN48 rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/24 17:39
Doable, but not so practical. Many people on Japan forums suggest day trips with longer travel time from Tokyo than a trip to Kyoto. Nara is the longest on your list, but making several 6-hour round trips is not too smart - one might be realistic, say Kyoto for a day, but don;t bother with a day trip to Osaka if you are staying in Tokyo. (And substitute Kamakura for Nara.)
There is the Japanican eVoucher good for a round trip, but at 29,110 yen for the 7-day national pass, that's a pretty expensive day trip.
by JapanCustomTours rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/24 19:02
If you really want to do this, then get the 7-day JR pass. Just plan your Kansai sightseeing very efficiently, and pick places you can get to in a short period of time. (This means you are not going to be able to hit five geographically scattered places on the Kyoto Top Ten list, for example.) You will also have to leave pretty early in the morning (and possibly return fairly late in the day) in order to have a good chunk of time for sightseeing. But honestly, itfs quite feasible if you do your homework and donft have unrealistic notions about how much sightseeing you can do in a day. If you are at the stage of asking which pass to get, you probably need to spend more time looking at schedules and logistics. You might decide that such an approach wonft work for you after all.

There are many people on this forum who are adamantly opposed to long day trips but I personally love them myself. I leave early and bring breakfast in the morning, relax and listen to music and watch the scenery fly by, visit a small number of carefully chosen places at my destination, and then have dinner (a bento or something) on the train back while enjoying music and scenery again. I love having a home base where I can leave my luggage and stuff, and not having to change hotels. But I do choose my hotels strategically when Ifm planning to make day trips in this fashion. And I try to get back early enough to gdecompress,h especially if I have another ambitious day planned for the next day.

I think itfs partly a matter of whether you see long-distance train riding in Japan as an enjoyable experience or whether you see it as a necessary evil. For me, listening to great music on the train makes all the difference in the word. (It also takes care of the occasional problem of noisy neighbors. Ifve heard many complaints about foreigners behaving obnoxiously on trains (and elsewhere), but most of the times Ifve been bothered by noisy people, it has been groups of Japanese natives who were making a racket. But my wireless headphones make that all go away...) For you, it might not be music but a good book, or something else to bring enjoyment while you cover the distance. But if youfre going to spend the whole time just wishing the train ride was over, then donft go this route!
by Kim (guest) rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/25 01:26
You can consider hokuriku arch pass 7 Day=24000 yen cover kansai airport, narita airport.
by Teresa (guest) rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/25 06:14
As most PPs wrote here doing Osaka, Kyoto and Nara from Tokyo as a daytrip (3 daytrips or 1?) is not such a good idea. I think you could do one place as a daytrip. Eg Kyoto. (Osaka doesnft make a lot of sense unless you have a very specific interest in Osaka, as Tokyo is the more interesting bog city of the two and Nara is simply yet a bit further away.

Regarding the Hokuriku arch pass, that is the slowest possibility to get from Osaka to Tokyo. It is meant for people who want to visit eg Kanazawa. Not suitable for what you seem to be planning.

If you really want to do only 1 daytrip, I would just buy a Shinkansen ticket without pass, because then you can ride the Nozomi train, which is both faster and more frequent. You donft want to make this daytrip extra hard on you by using slower / less frequent trains.

If you were thinking of 3 daytrips, I would definitely change hotel to Kansai. Maybe you can get an open jaw and arrive in Tokyo but depart from Kansai Airport.

However for me with the few days you have in Japan I would concentrate on Tokyo only and do daytrips to closet destinations sich as Kamakura or Nikko.

Enjoy your trip to Tokyo!
by LikeBike (guest) rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/25 08:41
Hi!

If you decide to only make 1 day trip to Kyoto (and possibly Osaka for dinner) and drop Nara completely, you should consider this offer from JapanIcan a subsidiary of JTB.
https://www.japanican.com/en/special/tours/shinkansen/index.aspx

For 3 trips you'd do better with a pass, but for one roundtrip this is the best offer since it allows you to take the nozomi and is still discounted.

Good luck!
by rkold rate this post as useful

Re: What is the best Pass 2019/6/25 23:24
Hi guys,
Many thanks for your valuable feedback. My trip this time is a kind of sudden plan that I got more days of free time as my assignment completed earlier.
And I did consider to all your feedback and finally I decided to stay 2 days in Kansai area and 3 days in Tokyo. It is excluded the day of arrival an departure from/to my country.
Regarding the pass, I decided to buy JR pass since I would be free to go anywhere without worries. Yes, I might not get deep or full picture of each city I plan to visit but at least I try to catch up the iconic place first. Again, thank to all of you guys..
by Windy (guest) rate this post as useful

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