7 or 14 day Pass?

Hi there,

I do think that a 14-day JR Pass will be the best option, you will be traveling most of your days and you can use the JR Pass for almost everything.

Here is a list of ticket prices without the JR Pass.

Narita Airport --> Tokyo ¥ 2,940
Tokyo --> Matsumoto ¥ 9,850
Takayama --> Hiroshima ¥ 16,410
Hiroshima Miyajima ¥ 940
Miyajima --> Hashimoto ¥ 12,350 (for Koya, from there you can take the Nankai railway).
Hashimoto --> Kyoto ¥ 1,890
Kyoto Nara ¥ 1,380
Kyoto --> Tokyo ¥ 13,220

For a total of ¥ 58,980, the 14 Day JR Pass is ¥ 45,100 so you would be able to save around ¥ 13,880.
In addition you can use the JR Pass on local lines in Tokyo.

The only part of your itinerary where you won't be able to use the JR Pass is to reach Koya-san. The closest station you can travel to is Hashimoto, as used in the ticket summary above. The price from Hashimoto to the foot of Koya (station name is Gokuraku bashi) is just ¥ 430 by the Nankai raiway.

Something else I would like to point out is your travel between Matsumoto --> Takayama using the train you can be there in about 4 hours, this is almost two hours longer than the bus but you can save the bus fare of ¥ 3,100.

Hope this helps,
Daniel

Invaluable. Thank you very much for the time you spent putting this together.