Hi

Has anyone had the experience of buying their individual rail tickets locally in Japan - we've done the comparion with a JR Pass and think it would be easier to purchase all tickets on arrival in Japan at a JR ticket office.

Can you pre-purchase tickets say 10 days in advance ?

How easily can it be done ...the language barrier is my main concern.


Thanks

You can purchase train tickets up to 30 days in advance. It is easy, even without speaking Japanese. If you intend to purchase a lot of tickets at once at a main station (read that as busy with long lines) then it would expedite the process if you had the city names and the times of the trains you wanted written neatly on a paper you could give to the clerk.

I've got the same concern, as I priced out a JR Pass, and for my needs (JR Yamanote rides during Tokyo tourism; Tokyo to Kyoto; Haruka from Kyoto to KIX) the JR Pass doesn't look worthwhile.

Can we buy advance tickets at non-major stations? (For me, JR Kaihin-Makuhari, on the JR Keiyo line, would be by far the most convenient.)

How will we know the available train times, when we're standing in the JR station to buy tickets? I've looked at hyperdia, but I'm often baffled by it, plus I won't have a laptop with me in Japan.

A question of specific interest to me (apologies to freddofrog04): Am I likely to have trouble getting on a shinkansen to Kyoto for travel July 24th if I try to buy the ticket around July 18th? I understand there are events on the 24th (parade of "flower parasols," return of mikoshi to Yasaka shrine) that are connected with Gion Matsuri.

tickets are easily bought at all JR train stations.

you should have no problem I can see getting your tickets for July 24th on July 18th. There are a lot of shinkansen on that run

Aloha!

"How will we know the available train times, when we're standing in the JR station to buy tickets?"

You have to know what train you will be catching then look for it on the overhead digital boards. Information is flashed in Japanese and English.....even in the small stations(boards are just smaller)

Check out these two sites thouroughly as they answer most of the questions you will have about catching a train in Japan. Don't worry.....it's pretty easy

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2016.html

http://www.japanrail.com/index.html

oh yeah I almost forgot, the most convenient way to get rail tickets imho is from the travel agent in your hotel lobby if you are lucky enough to have one. The service there is simple, convenient and usually free of charge.

Aloha!

ok, another way you can prebuy tickets online is through this site. I have done this before, if you read my recent trip report,it is easy to do. It is only good for reservations for the JR east group.

If you do the reservations this way you would still have to pick up the actual tickets at a designated JR station....

http://jreast-shinkansen-reservation...menu/menu.aspx

The ticket seller has access to all scheduled trains. All you have to do is state where you want to go and when, reserved seat or not, and smoking or not. You might have this written down if you are worried about communication.

www.hyperdia.com is fairly straightforward. You enter your starting and ending cities, the date and time, and go. You'll get the 5 results closest to but not before your selected departure time. You can also choose your desired arrival time if you prefer, which is useful for airport trips for example. The total time of each trip is displayed at the top, and as you scroill down you see each trip in detail, which includes the time for each leg and for each connection. The price that you pay is the total price...fare plus charge. Fare is the basic cost of point A to point B, and the charge is the supplement for faster, nicer trains and seat reservation if you choose that (seat reservations are nominal and optional, while the supplement is neither nominal nor optional).

KimJapan and Hawaiiantraveler - I really appreciate your answers above. I am sure this will be straightforward when we get there but I may as well take advantage of this thread to ask the following.

Six of us arrive at Narita at 3:40 in the afternoon. I was going to go to the JR office and obtain our JR passes and make reservations on the Narita Express for that day. I was also going to, at the same time, make reservations from Tokyo to Kyoto for three days later and then from Kyoto to Fukuoka six days later. According to Hyperdia, this combination of trains warrents purchasing a JR pass (barely).

My questions are – should I make all the reservations at once at Narita and will the person understand if all of this is written in English (train numbers etc). I have read the two sites referenced above and they do suggest that the info can be written in English (in fact there may be English forms available for that purpose). Thank you.

Bookmarking

If it were me I would make all reservations at one time there at the airport. It will take a few more minutes but you might as well while you are there.

Ask them to print the tickets in English for you although they probably will automatically. I have only had them printed in Japanese at small town stations....

Make sure to have your schedule written in plain and simple English....maybe something like this:

Tokyo-----> Kyoto 6/20/2008 9:00 reserved seat

Kyoto-----> Hakata 6/26/2008 9:00 reserved seat

You will already have your JR pass by the time you make your res so they will know to get you reserved seats

Hakata is the station name for the Fukuoka destination.

Yes they have extra forms in the JR office

Aloha!

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for your help!

KimJapan, your explanation helps, but here's what still confuses me about Hyperdia.com. When I look for travel from Kaihinmakuhari (the JR station near Makuhari Messe, in Chiba) to Shibuya, I can't get Hyperdia to show me travel that goes Kaihinmakuhari to Tokyo on the JR Keiyo the, then Tokyo to Shibuya on the JR Yamanote line -- even though I know there's a JR station at Shibuya on the Yamanote line?! Instead Hyperdia keeps telling me to get off the Yamanote line at Shimbashi, and get on the Ginza subway line to Shibuya. What am I not understanding??

A second question: if I buy a ticket & reserved seat in advance for the shinkansen and then miss my train , what happens? Is the ticket still good on later trains?

For some routes, like the one your are searching for, there are almost endless possibilities in terms of train combinations. Hyperdia returns routes based on the arrival or departure time you input and returns 5 possibilities closest to the time you select. Since there are so many options it cannot return all of them.

There are two things you can try. One is to put the station that you want to transfer into the passed point field. The other is to play with the time, like if you input 7:00 am and you get 5 results, the last result is 7:04 departure, search again but from 7;05. You could also break your journey and search in parts and piece it together yourself.

If you purchase tickets with reservations and you miss the train, you forfeit the reservation. I'm not sure what happens with the ticket though...it is good for the day, so I'm pretty sure you can use it except for the reservation. With a JR Pass if you miss the reserved train it is no problem, except if enough people do it JR may well stop giving out free reservations to JR Pass users.

Firstly, I agree that unless you are planning to be on a train everyday you're there, JR Passes are almost always not good value for money. We go to Japan every year, and every year I price them and find that they are significantly more expensive than the individual journeys, plus you don't have any flexibility on which types of trains you can take on certain routes.

What other posters have said about lines often being long to purchase tickets is also true. So if you know the dates/times of other journeys, you can certainly purchase several at one time for different journeys.

Purchasing them at the station is not really a problem, because there are so many trains. We had to purchase tickets for travel during xmas/new years periods last year, sometimes on days like the Emperor's Birthday, that we know are crowded for travel. We didn't pre-book, and we had no problems getting seats at all. On one journey, we couldn't get on the next train that was leaving, because it was already full about half an hour before departure, but we were able to get on the one after that, which was a mere half hour later... which gave us time to purchase some nice bentos for the journey!

Don't worry about making yourself clear at the ticket counter, without speaking Japanese. Learn a few terms that reflect what you want to do, and they will be able to tell you the best way. They are very friendly and good.

Have fun!