seat reservation

I have a few questions in regards to making seat reservations for Shinkansen trains. I've never been to Japan before let alone using its rail network.

I'll be in Japan in late March thru early April during the cherry blossom season. Do you think trains will be crowded during that period?

Do ticketing staff in most JR stations understand English?

When making a reservation, will a seat number be assigned just like the seat allocation system in a flight?

Could passengers request for his preferred seats when making a seat reservation?

Many thanks.

Do you think trains will be crowded during that period?

During certain times on certain routes and certain days, trains can get crowded, but it should usually be no problem to make seat reservations, especially if you do so one or more days in advance.

Do ticketing staff in most JR stations understand English?

It varies from person to person. Most of them understand simple train related words. Likewise, remembering these words in Japanese is not an impossible task.

When making a reservation, will a seat number be assigned just like the seat allocation system in a flight?

Yes. A seat and car number.

Could passengers request for his preferred seats when making a seat reservation?

Yes. But that involves more advanced vocabulary. The automatic seat allocation is usually pretty good. There are also some bilingual ticket machines (at least in the service area of JR East) that let you pick seats on the screen from car layouts for some trains, but it cannot be used by Japan Rail Pass holders. It is only for people who make seat reservations in conjunction of buying a regular ticket.

What I did this time around was have print outs (or if I made changes on the fly, wrote the info out) of:

Station of Departure (i.e. Shinagawa, Shin-Osaka, etc)
Departure Time
Shinkansen/Limited Express name (i.e. Hikari 445, Limited Kaiji 5, etc)
Destination station (i.e. Kyoto, Himeji, Odawara, etc)

I would also verbally ask for a no smoking car in Japanese. Note that if your preference is for non-smoking, sometimes if you try and make your seat reservation just before you leave, you may find no non-smoking seats left; it happened to me once when going to Himeji and the next train that had no smoking was scheduled to leave 2.5 hours later; so from that point, I tried to make my reservations a day in advance or batched them if I knew for sure my plans would not change.

Anyway, I had this info printed out so that I could make several seat reservations in advanced from a less crowded station during a time where there was not a long queue. I did this out of courtesy to others and the staff since they also go over each ticket with you to confirm the above details including car/seat # and if there is a long line, I don't want to be holding it up. I found by doing it this way, made it easier for the staff assisting me when doing several reservations.

Almost every JR ticket agent understands English at least those words commomnly used for reservations, but they cannot respond in English very well. As mentioned, much easier to write everything down, including non-smoking and ordinary car. We did this and had no problems.

Thank you guys for providing me with the answers.

Well, I didn't expect there were smoking cars on Shinkansen though. It must be pretty awful to have smokers in an all sealed up air-conditioned train cars. Thanks for the info cause I hate being around smokers and smoke choked places. I'd definitely make reservation early and make sure we are in non-smoking cars.

I think I'll use a piece of paper to put down my booking details in both English and Japanese before going to any ticketing office. I'll get my friendly and English speaking ryokan owner to help me with the japanese words. = )

I've only taken Shinkansen once, round trip to Kyoto, about 2 weeks ago, but I didn't have any problems.

Bascially, all I said was, '2 tickets', 'nozomi', 'reserved', 'no smoking'. I didn't say it as gruff as it looks on the screen. I said good morning, and smiled, and said please and thank you.

Both times, the ticket person understood me without any problems.

I'd say the trains were crowded, in that most seats were filled, but they run so frequently that there shouldn't be any issue with arriving at your destination within a reasonable time. However, during a more crowded season, I could see that it might not be that easy. Having the information ready and written down is the best way to go. I had everything written out, but we didn't need it. We were there super early too.

We got our tickets and had to wait about ten minutes for the train.