JR pass - my Japan Trip

Hi Team,

If I share my travel plan here, could someone help me determine if purchasing the 21-day JR Pass is worthwhile and identify any areas not covered by the pass?

I myself won't, but I am sure that other, more helpful people may.

In case you aren't aware of it, there is online tools which allows you to look up whether a pass pays off and -indirectly - whether routes are covered by JR passes or not. Here is one of them:
https://www.japan-guide.com/railpass/

I did use that JR calculator but I can’t find this path and a few more..

Example:

Ise station (Mie) to Nachi Station and Nachi station to Wakayama Station..

https://www.google.com/search?q=ise+to+nachi+by+train ?

good morning.

why not try and share it here :)
there are countless helpful souls in this forum

ps
this may also be a good test for AI
does not hurt to try it on chatGPT
looking forward to the outcome (of how good chatGPT is)

have a wonderful trip ~

The JR Pass is not valid for subways or buses in local areas like Osaka and Kyoto, right??

Generally speaking, no.

There is one JR bus line in Kyoto. Some JR train lines have stations within Kyoto/Osaka.

Hey Sam....
As Anastasia said, why don't you put the places in your travel plan here and you will get some concrete answers.

If you already have an itinerary and it is fairly “efficient” and conventional, without even seeing it I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t “break even” costwise with a nationwide JR pass. Since the huge increase in the prices of the JR pass about a year ago, essentially all typical tourist itineraries fall short of doing so. And the notion that a JR pass is a waste of money if it costs more than the total of point-to-point tickets is firmly entrenched in most people’s minds. There are actually some benefits to the pass that don’t revolve around saving as much money as possible on train tickets, but those benefits are generally not considered to be worth the extra cost of the pass. And for most people, they are decidedly not.

My own experience is that a nationwide JR pass can still be quite “worthwhile,” even at today’s prices, but only if from the beginning you plan a trip that incorporates strategic (and in some cases unconventional) use of the pass. But you kind of need to have a base of existing experience traveling in Japan to do this. It involves knowing exactly what the pass does and doesn’t cover, and some awareness of how you can extract benefits and value from it that go beyond the usual notions. In other words, you would need to do some more learning and route cost-checking, and be willing to think outside the box as far as your trip structure goes. Your time is probably going to be better spent in other ways, including possibly looking into some of the available regional passes, which in many cases can save tourists a fair amount of money on a conventional itinerary. They typically have to be coupled with at least some point-to-point purchased tickets. And there is no pass that will cover ALL of your transit in Japan, not even close. (If you don’t already know about IC cards in Japan, that would be a good next area of learning for you.)

If you already have an itinerary that DOES actually come close to “breaking even” with a nationwide pass, it is likely that people will start questioning the itinerary as being inefficient or illogical, or involving more train travel than most people find acceptable. (For example, you might be advised to use domestic air for one or more segments of your trip.) You may or may not be prepared for this feedback, but it actually might be useful to you.

But as suggested, why not go ahead and post your plan?

My Travel plan:
Day 1: Tokyo - Nikko - Tokyo
Day 2: Tokyo - Yokohama - Kamakura - Hakone
Day 3: Hakone
Day 4: Fuji Five Lakes
Day 5: Matsumoto
Day 6: Nagano
Day 7: Okuhida (Kamikochi) - Takayama - Shirakawago - Kanazawa (Ishikawa)
Day 8: Nagoya
Day 9: Himeji - Kinosaki
Day 10: Amanohashidate (Mount Koya) - Kyoto
Day 11: Kyoto
Day 12: Ise - Kumano - Shingu
Day 13: Wakayama - Osaka
Day 14: Osaka
Day 15: Nara
Day 16: Okayama - Kurashiki - Naoshima - Takamatsu
Day 17: Matsuyama
Day 18: Shimanami Kaido (Imabari) - Innoshima - Onomichi - Hiroshima
Day 19: Miyajima
Day 20: Fukuoka - Nagasaki
Day 21: Fukuoka - Kumamoto - Kagoshima

Based on Japan Rail Pass Calculator: Total cost without pass: 164,000 yen..

Regional Pass that may work for me based on my research so far are:

1. JR TOKYO Wide Pass for Nikko, Yokohamam, Kamakura, Hakone
2. Mt. Fuji-Shizuoka Area Tourist Pass Mini for Fuji Five Lakes, Hakone
3. Takayama-Hokuriku Area Pass for Takayama, Shirakawa-go, Kanazawa, Nagano,Nagoya, Matsumoto,
4. JR-WEST All Area for Osaka, Kyoto, Himeji, Wakayama, Kinosaki
5. Ise-Kumano-Wakayama Area Tourist for Ise, Kumano, Wakayama, Shingu, Nachi Katsuura
6. West Setouchi Area Pass for Okayama, Takamatsu, Kurashiki, Onomichi, Naoshima, Shimanami Kaido Innoshima, Matsuyama
7. All Kyushu for Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Kagoshima

Separate tickets for: Hiroshima, Miyajima, Nara

Estimated cost is around 121,200 (Yen) or AUD$1,212

Wow, do you have time to sightsee in this itinerary?

Here are better breakdown:

1. JR TOKYO Wide Pass for Nikko, Yokohama, Kamakura, Hakone (Hakone-Yumoto Station) - Day 1 to 3
2. Mt. Fuji-Shizuoka Area Tourist Pass Mini for Fuji Five Lakes - Day 4
3. Takayama-Hokuriku Area Tourist Pass for Matsumoto, Nagano, Takayama, Shirakawago, Kanazawa (Ishikawa), Nagoya - Day 5 to day 8
4. Okuhida - normal one way ticket Day 7
5. Kansai WIDE Area for Himeji, Kinosaki, Amanohashidate, Kyoto - Day 9 to 11 and Osaka, Nara - Day 13 to 15
6. Ise-Kumano-Wakayama Area Tourist for Ise, Kumano, Shingu, Wakayama - Day 12 and 13
7. West Setouchi Area Pass for Okayama, Kurashiki, Naoshima, Takamatsu, Matsuyama, Shimanami Kaido, Innoshima, Onomichi, Hiroshima - Day 16 to 18
8. Miyajima - normal one way ticket - Day 19
9. All Kyushu for Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Kagoshima - Day 20 and 21

Total cost around 105,400 (Yen)..

Hi LikeBike, sure!

Please send me your email, and I’ll share the complete travel plan with all the sightseeing details, timings, and more information.

I spent over 2 to 4 weeks planning so far..

I’m not going to get into a critique of your plan. It isn’t the sort of itinerary I would attempt myself, but if I were considering anything like it, I would definitely get a 21-day JR pass. Buying separate tickets for all of those legs would be a nuisance, and buying even half of the regional passes you laid out would be an enormous nuisance. Each pass has purchase, redemption, and usage restrictions that you have to figure out and navigate. Some of them can only be picked up within the service territory of the JR company involved, and this can sometimes be very difficult. If you get the nationwide JR Pass, you can make reservations for all JR trains in all areas online, change them any time you want, and pick up tickets at a machine, in principle without ever having to go to a staffed office except at the beginning to obtain the physical pass. So even if you didn’t save money with the pass, the ability to make all of your train arrangements (at least the JR ones) without ever having to stand in line at a Midori no Madoguchi will be a life-saver. (With the plan you are proposing, you really aren’t going to have any time to be standing in line at ticket offices.)

You probably already know that JR doesn’t serve Hakone (it will get you as far as Odawara) or Fuji Five Lakes (however many you want to go to that day), or most of the transit on your Okuhida to Kanazawa day (you are going to have to plan that one extremely carefully if you in fact want to get to Kanazawa on the last bus from Shirakawago). Amanohashidate is only partially covered (not sure what you are thinking with regard to Koyasan, which is not covered by the pass but you simply cannot do that between Kinosaki and Kyoto anyway). Naoshima requires non-JR transit but you are likely going to have to drop something on Day 16 anyway.

The thing about the nationwide pass is that you have enormous flexibility with it. On many trips that I have taken, especially when traveling alone, I have adjusted my plans on the fly, based on weather, how I’m feeling at the time, and other contingencies that inevitably occur. You might get tired of riding trains at some point and decide to scale back a bit, and if you have a JR pass, you can pretty much go anywhere you want “for free” as long as it is served by JR.

You didn’t mention what you plan to do for lodging in all of these places, but you are likely going to have serious problems if you don’t make reservations in advance. But I would advise you strongly to make sure you aren’t tethered by cancellation penalties. These days, many hotels and other types of lodging in Japan are starting to widen their cancellation windows, and I never book a hotel without checking. I almost never change my plans on short notice, but I don’t want to be left having to pay for a hotel if for some reason I am not able to stick with my original reservation. Many places have a 1-day or 2-day window, which I consider acceptable, but some of them are 3 days or even more.

Some other people might weigh in on your plan in more detail than LikeBike but with less restraint. My own general suggestion is that if you want to go to a lot of places, it can be more enjoyable to have a series of “home bases” where you stay in the same hotel several nights and do day trips, rather than trying to do everything with a linear point-to-point scheme where you change accommodations every night. With the “home-base/day trip” approach, a nationwide JR pass (or a selected set of regional passes) can often save you a rather large amount of money, while giving you enormous flexibility for day trip destinations. Long-distance day trips are one of the best ways to get value from a rail pass.

Day 6: Nagano
Day 7: Okuhida (Kamikochi) - Takayama - Shirakawago - Kanazawa (Ishikawa)
Day 8: Nagoya

For day 7, even with an early start, I doubt you can visit all 4 locations in one day. If you're only passing through Takayama and visit Kanazawa for most of day 8, maybe that's doable.

Day 12: Ise - Kumano - Shingu
I would be very curious to see your timings for this section.

- Even with a 6am start from Kyoto, you probably would still get back too late to Shingu to visit anything (Kumano Hayatama-taisha closes at 5pm, Nachi falls as well). And we're looking at 8 hours in transportation for 3 hours of sightseeing.
- You could save 1 hour of transportation by doing that on day 9, starting from Nagoya. With an early start (~6 or 7 am), you could do Ise + Kumano Hongu Taisha on day 9. On day 10, Shingu area, then make a brief stop in Wakayama before heading to Osaka. This assumes you are visiting between March-September (when the sunset is relatively late) otherwise you should skip Wakayama.

Day 10: Amanohashidate (Mount Koya) - Kyoto
Is there another Mount Koya in Amanohashidate? (serious question)

I agree with @Likebike I feel exhausted just reading that itinerary. It seems ludicrously over full to me, I would only feel that I'd passed through places without really seeing them at all. But if thats what you want to do it then it seems physically possible

One thing I forgot to mention, and it is a very important point: with the nationwide JR pass, you can change your reservations online as many times as you want, UNTIL you pick up your tickets. Once tickets have been issued, you have to stand in line at a ticket office to make changes. So even if you think it might be more efficient to collect all your tickets (or a bunch) at one time, it is better strategy to wait until the night before a trip, or in the morning (allowing enough time in case there is a wait at a ticket machine). This is what I did on my last trip, and I made quite a few changes on that trip but the only time I had to stand in line was on a day when there was a sudden disruption of all trains on the Kyushu shinkansen line after I had already boarded a train. (You should be aware that such events do sometimes happen, and the more trains you are taking, the more likely it is that you will be affected. Once, I had to wait for hours on the Kii Peninsula because there was a wind and rain event. Earthquakes, “human events,” and other unforeseen circumstances can really wreak havoc when you have a tight schedule.)

Some travelers don’t bother to pick up tickets for reserved-seat JR train rides, and in fact you will almost never be required to show them, but I always get them because it is JR’s official policy that you are supposed to have them.

Also, you probably know that you can make reservations online with the JR pass only if you buy it through the official JR site. If you buy the pass from an agency, you lose this ability, which I consider to be absolutely essential. Some companies have website names that make you think they are the official JR site, but don’t be taken in by this.