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Booking seats on JR East Joyful train Kairi

Gillcrawshaw
Gillcrawshaw
4 days ago
2 answers

We will be travelling to Niigata in Sept and would like to travel on the Kairi Joyful Train, operated by JR East.

We would like to travel on the Kairi train on 19th or 20th Sept 2025.

Can we use our JR Pass to travel on this train?

If so, will we be able to book 2 seats on Kairi when we arrive in Japan and activate our JR Pass earlier in Sept? We arrive in Japan on 9 Sept. We will probably book seats on various trains the next day.

I have looked at the JR East Kairi website which suggests we need to book seats on this train a few weeks in advance. However, as we are in the UK I can’t work out if it is possible to do this. Parts of the website are in Japanese, but the information in English is also confusing.

I hope you can help!

Thank you

avatar
Daniel-san
19173 posts
3 days ago
Expert

Hi there,

Yes, the JR Pass covers this train but as you say, getting seat reservations will be the challenge.

You should have a good chance to do so, if you do it right away in arriving in Japan.

If you have the option to book them directly (you understand the Japanese website, or have a friend that can help) then you could buy normal tickets for the train as soon as they are available. Then rebook them under the railpass when you arrive in Japan.

Kind regards,
Daniel

Useful!1
Gillcrawshaw
Gillcrawshaw
2 posts
3 days ago

Thanks Daniel, that is as I thought. I’ll see if we can either work it out or find someone to help. Otherwise we’ll have to take a chance booking when we arrive in Japan

Useful!0
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