Should we avail a JRPass?

Hi there,

Arriving late at Kansai Airport, you can stay the night at the airport, sleep on one of the benches or spend the night in the Internet Lounge. There are also a range of Hotels available around Kansai Airport, including budget hotels. Which may be a better solution, given that you just had a flight and want to be fresh for a full week of exploring Japan. You can also still make it to Osaka if you arrive around 10 and book a hotel there that allows for late check-in.

It will beneficial to get a 7 Day JR Pass for sure, judging from your planned itinerary. The Shinkansen return between Tokyo - Osaka/Kyoto is about the same price, so all the travel after that is what you save :)

Here is a little list to illustrate what I mean:
Kansai Airport --> Shin-Osaka by Haruka express ¥ 2,770 (assuming you stay the first night at or around the Airport).
Shin-Osaka --> Tokyo ¥ 13,750
Tokyo --> Osaka ¥ 13,750
Osaka --> Kyoto ¥ 540
Kyoto --> Kansai Airport ¥ 3,280

This adds up to ¥ 34,090 The 7-Day JR Pass is 28,300, so you would save ¥ 5,790. This is not including any rides you will make on the local JR lines within Tokyo and Osaka, which will certainly make for even better savings.

The Pass will get you to the bigger share of the places you want to go but some will require a different kind of transport. In Tokyo this is only Odaiba. But you may as well make the best of it and ride the Yurakamome there, which is a mono rail like train without a driver! Personally I think its really cool!

The Skytree may be a little bit confusing to access by JR too, you can ride the JR Sobu line from Tokyo to Kinshicho and walk from there (its about 30 minutes, but you can't get lost, because you will always be able to see the tower).
Other ways of reaching the Sky Tree can be found here on the access page.

For Kyoto, I would recommend buying a one day bus pass which is just ¥ 500 and allows you to travel to all of the sights you plan to see!

Hope this helps,
Daniel

Thanks for the fast and helpful reply!

i was checking all the places in hyperdia ( i want to be sure i have read that there are some complicated transfers in trains in japan) then i checked our return in Osaka (Oct 28) i saw that from Ueno (where our hotel is located) to JR-Namba (nearest JR in our hotel in namba) could not be covered all by JRPass(?)

here it how it shows:
Ueno -> Tokyo -> Shin Osaka -> (using osaka city subway midosuji line which is not covered by JRPass?) Namba Subway -> JR Namba

im so confused with kansai stations there are many types of namba, ive saw nankai and subway, there is also JRNamba i don't know which one to use in hyperdia. im okay with our tour in tokyo tho, it was easy to understand, even in odaiba thanks to you ^_^

so this might be troublesome (im sorry for that) but can you make a draft of stations that i should search in hyperdia using our itinerary in oct 28? (our return to osaka)

many thanks in advance! ^_^

Hi Again!

The rail-network in Osaka is includes different companies and a lot of lines so it can be somewhat confusing.
You can use the JR Pass to travel all the way to JR-Namba (also knows as the Minami area) without extra costs, I think you may have forgotten to exclude private companies in your Hyperdia search.

Here is the route for the JR Pass from Ueno -- JR Namba.
A great resource is this map with all lines in and around Osaka.

Hope this helps,
Daniel

PS: I forgot about Sensoji in my last post, it is located in Asakusa but you can't go all the way there by JR. I would suggest going to Ueno and taking the Metro from there (Ginza line).

Thanks again for the reply!

i have a question again, is JR Namba and Namba station are two different station? if yes, is there a way to cross from JR Namba to Namba Station without extra fees needed? we want to view nmb48's theater and it's near Namba station, when i viewed the map, i thought it was the same from JRNamba but it's different. ^^;

also is it possible to walk from ueno station to sensoji? or it's a bit too far?

Hi there!

JR-Namba is the station used by JR trains and Namba by the Osaka metro lines.
They are very close and you can transfer from one the the other in 5-10 minutes.

If you want to use the JR Pass - use JR Namba.

You can walk from Ueno but I think it will take 40-60 minutes, but may be a little hard if you have not done it before.
Its ¥160 from Ueno to Asakusa by metro.