JR Rail Pass

JR RAILPASS is a convenient method for temporary visitors or people with foreign passports. It enables it’s user to travel unlimited distances with most JR methods excluding only the fastest Nozomi shinkansen.

JR Railpasses come in two versions, Ordinary and Green. Both come in variations of 7, 14, or 21 days validity.

The Green one provides with first class “Green Car” seats, while the Ordinary is just ordinary seats, but neither of them allows traveling with Nozomi, even if the user would want to "upgrade" to this super fast N700 train. But the Ordinary ticket holders can always pay extra fee to obtain the green seat on Kodama and Hikari shinkansen.

Buying Japanese railpass is simple - first you need to purchase the exchange ticket in your country. It is important to realize that you must purchase this exchange ticket before you enter Japan. Some travel agencies sell JR railpass exchange coupons bundled to airticket offers.

After you enter Japan and get tourist visa stamp to your passport, you can go to one of the travel offices in major stations and obtain your JR RAILPASS.

Sadly, not all stations have the office capable of exchanging railpasses. Mostly bigger stations along the rails such as Hiroshima, Okayama, Kyoto, Nagoya, Hamamatsu, or say, Kushiro have it.

While preparing your journey, it is important to check the location of nearest office from the booklet that comes with your JR railpass exchange order.

In addition, with JR railpass traveler can get discount to several hotels, such as Jr Tower Hotel Nikko Sapporo (Y14,784) or Crowne Plaza Metropolitan (Y15,115)in Tokyo. Sadly the rack rates of these hotels were not reasonable to begin with.

Travelling with JR railpass is different experience. Before your trip you must make your way to JR ticket office (Midori no madoguchi) and obtain a seat reservation. With JR railpass you don’t have to use the ticket gate but you must go through the manned gate in the station, and present your pass.

Comments