We will be heading to Japan at the end of this month and have a few transportation questions - I just want to confirm whether my thinking is correct or not:

1. In Kyoto we are staying at a hotel near the Imperial Garden which means we will definitely be taking Karasuma Subway Line daily as well as local buses. I'm thinking the Kyoto sightseeing card at 2000 yen for 2 days is the best deal as Kyoto one day bus pass is 500 yen and Kyoto subway one day pass is 600. I know savings is almost nothing but buying a two day pass means we would only need to buy twice rather than four times ( we will be there for 4 days). Is this thinking correct?

2. Our JR Pass will expire the day after we arrive in Tokyo. We will be staying at the Manadarin Oriental right near Tokyo Station. I assume we should just buy a Suica card. Is this correct? Do we buy a Suica card for each one of us or can you just buy one and run it through for each person?

3. We have purchased JR Pass for Green Car and will be going Tokyo-Kyoto, Kyoto-Hiroshima and Hiroshima-Tokyo. Will we be able to make all our reservations at the airport when we pick up our JR Passes?

Thanks guys! Countdown is on and got to be on top of the logistics!

1. Is your motivation convenience or saving money? For convenience I would just get the local equivalent of a Suica card. Those cards all interoperate now, so you'll be able to use it in Tokyo. I used a Tokyo Suica card in Fukuoka a couple of weeks ago: the only wrinkle (which took me a while to work out) was that it had to go in the recharging machine the other way around.

2. Yes, use a Suica or equivalent. You need one each.

3. You can get all your reservations at the airport but it is considered bad manners as it clogs up the line for those who just need a ticket. Get your N'Ex reservation at the airport and the rest later.

For convenience, I'd get a SUICA card at the same time as you pick up your JR Pass -- you can use that on both Tokyo and subways and add more money to it as and when necessary. And you can keep it for a future visit too.

For the buses in Kyoto, we just paid them individually but if you're going to use more than a couple a day, the day pass would make sense.

I'm not sure whether or not the sightseeing card would be a better bet than SUICA plus bus pass, cost wise.

Regarding Someotherguy's point 3: Personally, I don't think it's the case that there's some widely understood secret etiquette that you should not ask for your other reservations at the same time as picking up your JR Pass. I know from another thread that he was enormously frustrated to be stuck behind folks doing that when he picked up his JR Pass, but I'm not sure that this makes the claim that it is considered bad manners any more true. At most, I think you could say, there might be people behind you in the queue who feel a bit impatient. That's life, and the JR office is not purely for JR Pass collection as some might wish, it's for associated ticket services too. You could do what we did, pick up your JR Pass and then ask for reservations to be made once the queue has been dealt with. There were several staff on duty there in any case, so having one of them tied up for 20 minutes dealing with our reservations hardly brought the tiny trickle of JR Pass collections to a halt!

Thank you both for your replies. On Japan-Guide site it mentioned that the Kyoto prepaid IC cards could be used on trains and buses, so it was unclear to me if it could also be used on the subways. Therefore, I thought the sightseeing card would be more convenient because it could be used on both buses and subways. Could someone confirm whether Kyoto prepaid IC can be used for subways as well?

So also to clarify if I get a SUICA card in Tokyo it can be used on buses and subways in Kyoto?

Thanks for your help.

I haven't been since 2013 but at that time, the SUICA could not be used on Kyoto buses. That said, the SUICA had only recently (at that time) been expanded to be usable on subways all around Japan so it may well be that since then, it's been expanded to be used on buses too. But for us, no we couldn't use it on buses.

For us, since we had the SUICA already when we hit Kyoto, and still with some money on them, we found it convenient to continue to use these for the subway and pay buses separately.

I don't think it's a big deal if you go for the sightseeing card instead, though. For the sake of your preference/ convenience it's not like it's hugely more expensive or anything, so I would go with what feels better for you.