This is the last of three posts on traveling in Japan on a budget. In previous posts, I wrote about the cost of a trip to Japan and the Shanghai-Osaka Ferry.
Dan and I set off for Japan last month armed with very little in the way of research under our belts. We had a copy of Lonely Planet: Japan and figured that two days on the boat would be enough time to plan everything else. The sole thing we’d arranged ahead of time was the Japan Rail Pass, which we’d bought without knowing whether it would really save us money.
The Rail Pass allows for unlimited travel on Japan Rail lines throughout the country, including all but the fastest of the ultrafast shinkansen lines. The passes ain’t cheap — a 14-day pass costs ¥45,100, or roughly $500 (USD) — but they are universally recommended as a moneysaver. At a minimum, we knew we would be traveling from Osaka down to Hiroshima, up to Tokyo and back down to Osaka, with plenty of stops in between. The Rail Pass seemed like a good bet, and in fact, it saved each of us ¥34,640 yen ($383) on train travel. That’s almost as much as the cost of the pass itself.
In two weeks, we used the pass to travel via shinkansen from Osaka to Kyoto-Himeji-Hiroshima-Fukuoka-Kobe-Yokohama-Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka, and took non-shinkansen trips to Nara, Takayama and all over Tokyo, where Japan Rail has a large network of intracity lines. All of this travel would have cost a startling ¥79,740 ($882) if we hadn’t had the pass.
It is true that to some extent, our itinerary was affected by the fact that we did have the pass. If we had been paying for every ticket individually, we probably would have skipped Fukuoka (Hakata), our only stop on Kyushu, and saved roughly ¥16,000. We might not have stopped in Kobe for lunch or in Himeji for an afternoon. And we probably would have taken some slower, cheaper trains rather than taking the shinkansen every chance we got. But we really appreciated the flexibility that the pass gave us to play things by ear and to explore as much of Japan as possible. Even though it would have been free, we never bothered to make a seat reservation, instead taking our chances in the nonreserved cars. (Without the pass, reserved seats cost more than nonreserved seats.)
All-in-all, we were very pleased with the decision to buy the Japan Rail Pass. If we had had a fixed itinerary, I would have used Hyperdia to calculate our potential savings in advance. But even without knowing that we would save money, I think it was a good decision. Not only did it save us cash, but it took financial considerations out of any discussion about where to go or how long to stay. Update (July 2010): If you don’t want to do the math yourself, Akila at The Road Forks has calculated the relative savings for trips of various lengths and speeds.
A shinkansen train whizzing through Himeji station.
The nitty-gritty: Japan Rail passes are available for both ordinary and Green Car (deluxe) travel. You can choose between 7-, 14- and 21-day passes. Your rail pass voucher must be purchased before you enter Japan, and the voucher is valid for three months from the date of purchase. Plenty of U.S.-based travel agents, including STA Travel, sell passes online online. We bought ours through a Hong Kong travel agent, which caused a few days of anxious nail-biting after we had deposited the payment into their bank account and we were still waiting for the passes to arrive (because that’s how you do business in China). Once you get to Japan, you bring your passport and your rail pass voucher to a train station to obtain your actual Japan Rail Pass.
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