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Itinerary doubts

Christoven
Christoven
about 4 years ago
3 responses

Hello,

Me and my friend are planning to ravel to Japan and made this itinerary, we have many doubts about using a 7 or 14 days JR pass. Not also that, we also have questions on how to use it, do we have to book or get a ticket for every trip or just showing the pass will allow us to travel?

Our itinerary is this one

Day 7 - Arrival at Narita airport (18:20) + Tokyo Tower
Day 8 - West and South Tokyo
Day 9 - Hakone
Day 10 - Kyoto (north/west/south)
Day 11 - Kyoto (centre and east)
(sleep in inouega village) Day 12 - Nara
Day 13 - Hiroshima + Miyajima island
(sleep in Himeji) Day 14 - Himeji + nijigennomori park + Expo 70
Day 15 - Osaka (including Universal studios)
Day 16 - Disneyland (tokyo)
Day 17 - Tokyo (centre) + Flight back at 22:20

So we started thinking if we activated our 7 day pass in our trip to hakone we though maybe it's the best, not knowing if catching a late night train from osaka to tokyo on the night 15-16 is better than catching the shinkansen and sleeping in tokyo. We don't know even if we can catch the last shinkansen if we get out of Universal Studios at closing time.
So we started thinking maybe 14 day pass was a better option, and we wouldn't even bother with trips to disneyland or to and from the airport.

Other questions we have is how to travel faster, as you can see our time is way too much limited for the cities we want to see (but we won't give up on any city) question is, what is faster to travel with the JR lines inside the cities or is bus/subway a better option to use to sightsee those cities, we were thinking of buying osaka and Kyoto passes as well as the hakone pass that i've seen here posted and recommended many times. Also if JR line is not as fast as we need ad not that useful inside tokyo, what day-passes you recommend (subway? combination?)

I will be looking forward to your answer
Kind Regards

(Im trying to post this for the third time, I don't know why it disappears but it constantly says on the right bar Christoven 1 posts and some days after drop to 0, but as they say third time is the charm)

avatar
Daniel-san
18835 posts
about 4 years ago
Expert

Hi there,

Its a bit of a hard one, economically speaking, a 7-day Japan Rail Pass would be the best option if you can use it to travel from Hakone to Kyoto, Hiroshima [...] and then back to Tokyo. That said, you do travel more than enough to a point where a 14-day JR Pass will be cost effective too.

For seat reservations, we explain it here:
https://www.jrpass.com/blog/reserving-seats-boarding-the-bullet-train

For local sightseeing, it really depends on where you want to go within each city. The best advice here is to map out your plan for the day in advance, then figure out the transport (Google Maps work well here) and finally see if you can match a discounted ticket to it. You may even want to consider a taxi from time to time to speed up things.

Kind regards,
Daniel

Christoven
Christoven
3 posts
about 4 years ago

Hello Daniel,

Thank you so much for your answer, we will probably take the 7-day pass as we too think that we can probably save more than the 14 day pass.

Can we try to reserve some trips as soon as we get to tokyo (not having the pass activated and reserving with more than 7 days in advance?)

Other thing I was watching now I wanted to know which service is better from your offers (pocket wifi rent or a SIM CARD) for what we checked the pocket wi-fi was unlimited and we having 2 phones and maybe some more devices we though that maybe it was worth it despite being more expensive than the 2 sim cards however it's battery life is of only 9-10H or something and we don't know when can we charge it, since we will be using already whatever time we have to charge our phones and powerbanks. The 2 sim cards for what I read in your website will drop it's speed if I spend more than 10 GB in 2 days or something like that (I don't know how much internet will I be using). What are the reviews you are having about both of them?

avatar
Daniel-san
18835 posts
about 4 years ago
Expert

Hi again :)

You can reserve seats the moment that you are in Japan and have activated the JR Pass.

Regarding WiFi, we actually only sell Pocket WiFi on JR Pass.com, this is mainly due to the convenience level and reliability. It will work with any device that connects over WiFi, that's it. The device will go in stand-by if you don't use it for 10min, and this extends the battery life massively. Personally I love the Pocket WiFi but if you are looking for the most economic option for internet in Japan, then a SIM may be the way to go.

Nearly all Shinkansen and many other trains have in-seat power outlets, so charging on the go is no problem. It will also save your phone battery, as you can use it on Flightmode with just WiFi enabled.

Hope this helps,
Daniel

Christoven
Christoven
3 posts
about 4 years ago

Hello Daniel,

Confirmed now that in fact I was watching two different sites about the same thing japan-rail-pass and not jrpass.com.
That's some good information in my country we can't count on anything like that on our trains.

Thanks for all, any further doubt I will keep you busy through here :D

Kind regards,


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