Opinion on Itinerary/JR Necessary?

Hello,

In 10 days I'll be on a 14 days expedition to Japan for the first time with my husband!! Here's my current itinerary:

Day 1 - OSAKA
Day 2 - OSAKA
Day 3 - KYOTO
Day 4 - KYOTO
Day 5 - KYOTO
Day 6 - NARA
Day 7 - ATAMI
Day 8 - TOKYO
Day 9 - TOKYO
Day 10 - TOKYO
Day 11 - TOKYO
Day 12 - HAKONE
Day 13 - HAKONE
Day 14 - TOKYO

We have open jaw tickets: Fly in to Kansai Airport and out from Narita Airport.

At this point we can are still debating whether to get 7days JR Pass between Days 2-8. That would be exactly 7 days, but since we don't need to take roundtrip, is it worth paying 28,300yen per person for the pass?

Thanks in advance for any comments/advice.

Nope its cheaper by single fare tickets, then JR pass.

What do you plan on doing in ATAMI?

You should stop at Hakone on your way back from Kyoto or Atami, then go to Tokyo last after Hakone. It just puts it in better order.

If you go to Nara you should return to Kyoto for the night if you plan to leave the next day for either, Atami, Hakone or Tokyo, since Nara station is only a local train station with no Shinkansen connections, you'll have to go from Nara back to Kyoto to connect to the Shinkansen.

Thanks for your reply, John. We will take your advice and skip the JR Pass. We have made hotel/ryokan reservations already. My cousin who used to live in Japan suggested a ryokan in Atami for us to experience. She had stayed there before and highly think we should stay there: http://www.syukaen.com/index2.html
She told us there's not much to see in the area, but to just relax and enjoy the ryokan. As for Nara, we will be staying at: http://www.yougendo.com/
She also highly recommended this place. Good thing is the site provides directions to the ryokan, so I'm not too worried about getting lost there. I'm actually more worried about getting lost going to the ryokan in Atami because the site seems to be in Japanese only...

According to the map there is a bus:

http://www.syukaen.com/map.html

I would print out the page just in case you did get lost, along with the hotel address and telephone number in case you want to just take a taxi from the train station:


�G�ԉ��@���̉ԑV
��413-0023
�É����M�C�s�a�c�l�쒬7-13
TEL 0557-83-5151
FAX 0557-83-3933

Thanks again John.

Can you also translate this page for me? Is it talking about some shuttle service?

http://www.syukaen.com/sougei.html