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Urgently Need Help!

abroadinjapan
abroadinjapan
over 9 years ago
2 responses

So I did research before coming to Japan and had everything planned out for when my friend and I were going to be here in Japan. However I was looking over the JR Pass site again and just found out that the JR Pass does not apply to people carrying a student visa, which both my friend and I have as we are studying abroad for a semester. We were relying on being able to use the 14-day JR Pass for our 2 weeks of travel before we go back to the states. Can anyone suggest other methods of use getting discounts in JR lines?

Here is our itinerary. We'll be leaving from Sapporo. So we would start from there.

Sapporo to Akihabara

Tokyo (we'll be staying in Akihabara for all 5 days)
1) Akihabara (2days) 2) Shibuya (1 day) 3) Shinjuku (1 day) 4) Harajuku (1 day)

Akihabara to Kyoto

1) Kyoto (2 days) (we'll be staying in Kyoto all 5 days)
2) Nara (1 day)
3) Osaka (2 days)

Kyoto to Hiroshima

Hiroshima (3 days)

We have student ID cards, but I don't know if the JR student discount applies to foreign exchange students. However I did find this: http://japantravellight.com/jr-student-pass.shtml

Our 14 days of travel would be between the winter days of validity as we'll leave on December 20th and our last day is January 3rd. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know as soon as possible.

avatar
Daniel-san
18832 posts
over 9 years ago
Expert

Hi there,

I am very sorry to hear about this, the JR Pass would have been a great help here. To reduce cost I would look at a domestic flight from Hokkaido - Tokyo then buy an Kodama Economy Plan ticket to Kyoto.

You could then use the JR Seishun 18 (Juhachi) Kippu (what you call student JR Pass) for travel to Hiroshima and locally. Using this tickets for the other parts is something I would try to avoid as travel times are way to long otherwise.

You should be able to get around if you use the above tickets/plans. Budget airlines within Japan such as Peach Airways sometimes have very low domestic flights at around 3000yen.

Hope this helps and good luck!
Daniel


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