JRPass

Hi there,

This looks like a great itinerary.

The 6th of August may be a bit of a hard day - Nara is around 1hr from Osaka, and Odawara (for Hakone) is around 4 hours away from Nara. From Odawara you'll need at least another hour to travel up to the Hakone lakes ares (using non-JR transport - I recommend the Odakyu Hakone Freepass. Factoring in 5 hours or so around Nara will make for a pretty long day. If you can fit the Nara trip as a day trip from Kyoto on perhaps the 1st or 2nd I think you'll have a much easier day on the 6th.

Given your itinerary, I think a 7 day Japan Rail Pass makes most sense. You could couple this with the Narita Express + Suica Tokyo Metro card deal. This will give you a prepaid card with ¥1500 travel on the Tokyo metro essentially for free, in addition to the Narita Express return for around the same price as a normal N'EX return.

If you think you'll travel outside Tokyo during your time there - for example to Nikko, then a 14 day rail pass will start to make sense, but based on the information you listed, a 7 day pass is the right choice.

Hope this helps!

Hi there!

That's looking like a great trip.

If you keep your itinerary as you have it, then yes, I recommend a 7 day rail pass. I think if you stick with your curent itinerary you'll have a great time, but if you were searching for another thing, you could look at a trip to Kinosaki Onsen. It's around 3hrs from Osaka on the Japan Sea coast, and is a fantastic little town with many Onsen, a great atmosphere and routinely described as the best Onsen town in the area of Hyogo. Here's a good forum post with more, and you can also book many onsen online. Here's a good tripadvisor. You are going to stay in Hakone however, so it really depends on if you've had your fill of onsen (personally I can never get enough!).

Hope you have a great time!