10 days Travel itinerary?

Hiya,

We are planning a trip end of March to Japan, our itinerary is:
Land at Haneda go to Tokyo
2x nights in Tokyo, onto Hakone
1x night in Hakone, onto Kyoto
2x nights in Kyoto, onto Osaka
3x nights in Osaka, back to Tokyo
1x night in Tokyo, onto Narita Airport to fly home

As it's 10 nights I don't really want to purchase a 14 days JR Pass, so was thinking if I buy a 48 hour subway pass for the first few days in Tokyo, then do the Romancecar to Hakone, then activate a 7 day JR pass for the rest of the trip, is this the best way to organise our travel? Also would it then be expensive to get from Haneda to Tokyo? And would the JR pass cover the trip after Hakone or would we have to buy extra tickets anyway?

Any help much appreciated!

Hi!

Is there a reason you want to change hotels between Osaka and Kyoto? And they're awful close together and it is easy enough to commute between them. I have taken a train as late as 22:00 or possibly later to get from JR Osaka to JR Kyoto.

Assuming your trip is exactly as written and there is no additional shinkansen travel, assuming your hotel in Tokyo is convenient to a NEX Station so that it makes sense to use the NEX vs. a private line, assuming your travel from Hakone to Kyoto and Tokyo to Narita all fits within 7 days, then yes, getting a 7 day pass and using Odakyu to get from Shinjuku to Hakone makes the most sense. However, changing the above metrics changes whether getting a rail pass makes sense and it could be cheaper to just pay out of pocket for tickets.

Personally, I find when I am in Tokyo I just use a Suica for sightseeing. I don't travel enough by subway to make a subway pass pay off and it takes a lot of JR travel to make it worth spending more than just cash on tickets. But again it will partially depend on where you are staying and where you are trying to get to whether using JR or a subway makes sense.

Good luck!