On my public transit rundown, I got a question that came as no surprise: what about the JR Pass? On travel forums, questions about when to use a JR pass are among the most common, so I thought it deserved its own post.
Actually, there are several different kinds of JR pass, broken down by region, but when someone refers to just “The JR Pass,” they mean the pass that for periods of one, two, or three weeks, allows the bearer unlimited use of all Japan Rail trains, including the Shinkansen, for no additional cost. No buying additional tickets or IC cards. Just flash the pass to the attendants at the ticket gates and go.
Only people in Japan as temporary visitors are eligible for this, referring to the specific visa type you need.
There are two shinkansen that aren’t covered on the JR pass: the Nozomi and Mizuho. Nozomis run along the Tokaido-Sanyo line, from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka, and Mizuhos cover from Shin-Osaka to the southern terminus of the Sanyo line. They make the fewest stops, so they get you there fastest. Not to worry though, there are plenty of other trains on those lines that you can take, and it won’t be that much slower.
It used to be that you had to buy the JR pass before going to Japan from a travel agency, so there were slight price variations. Now, in some cases you can buy it when you arrive in Japan, but it’s a little more expensive.
For the seven day normal class pass, it’s 29,110 YEN at the time of writing. According to the current exchange rate, that’s’s $262.13.
That depends! The price of a one week JR pass is about the same as just buying roundtrip shinkansen tickets from Tokyo to Osaka. If you plan on doing that and using a lot of JR trains to get around, then it might make sense. But let’s say you’re staying in the Shizuoka area for most of your trip, and you flew into Tokyo. Unless you take a lot of far away day trips, it probably would cost less to just buy individual tickets.
JR is also not just one company. It’s split into regions. JR East offers rail passes that cover much smaller areas at lower cost, which might make sense. JR West does something similar.
On our last trip, we took advantage of one of the JR East passes to go to Nagano prefecture. The pass covered several days of riding the Hokuriku shinkansen back and forth, and allowed you to pick non-consecutive days, so we could chill for a day without feeling like we were wasting it.
On the trip before that, we got the nationwide JR passes, and over the course of the trip, rode the train from Tokyo to Fukuoka and back, with stops in between. We definitely got our money’s worth, but it was also exhausting.
I’ll talk more about region-specific JR passes in my next post!
