Seat availability on bullet trains during cherry blossom season
 

Hi there,

I am about to purchase our 7-day JR passes, but need expert advice from you folks. We will be in Japan on March 25- April 3 and visiting Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka area. Is cherry blossom season considered peak travel? Trying to determine if the green pass is advisable or ordinary pass would do and we won't have any problems with seats during this time. Thanks for your input!

There are so many shinkansen daily between those cities I doubt you would have a problem. You can reserve your seats when you exchange your JR Pass rather than waiting if you want.

There are different train lines to travel between Kyoto and Osaka also.

I have traveled several times from Tokyo to Kyoto during that period and have never had an issue.

That's what I was hoping to hear! That is good to know that I can reserve our seats beforehand. Thanks!

Remember to ask the agent to print the tickets in English.

Yes!

Yes. It is considered peak travel. I've been to Japan over 40 times and used to try and time my visits to coincide with the cherry blossoms. Now I try to avoid it at. Too many tourists = long lines when trying to buy a train ticket and you can encounter massive delays in Immigration. Two years ago it took me 2.5 hours to enter through Kansai. There were 2 flights of Chinese tourists and 2 flights of Koreans. After all that, I found my bag decided to stay over in HNL an extra day. Can't blame it, really.

I can't use machines to buy my Green Car tix with US corp AMEX card, because a PIN is required.

There are more tourists generally, but Cherry Blossom season is not one of the peak travel seasons in Japan. Peak travel is when the Japanese travel (Obon, New Year, Golden Week - times like that).

You might have some additional difficulty because of the increase in tourists over the past few years, but that is becoming more of a year-round issue.