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Comment by thr33 | Hacker News Reader

the JR pass is almost never a good deal. you need to do a significant amount of travel over a significant distance in a short amount of time and is a very inconvenient way to travel compared to just using an IC card plus adhoc shinkansen tickets.

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An easy-to-understand, single-price ticket that doesn’t require detailed planning is a very good argument for tourism.

100%. Most first-time visitors don’t expect that their pass is useless on days you remain within a city, and that they’re burning money on an unused pass day. And a trip like Osaka-Kyoto is what, $10 normally?

I priced out a complicated multi-city itinerary for a family visit and even with a lot of long distance trains it basically broke even.

Unless you use Chuo and Yamanote to get around in Tokyo or need to take Narita Express or Monorail to the airport. Or you want to get from central Osaka to Namba by Kansai or out to Nara, or all the way to Kyoto, or take a ferry to an island.

There's lots of things that the JR Pass works for that aren't Shinkansen and they used to add up even if it was just $10/day, and you didn't have to worry about it. Just the Narita Express was $30-40 one way.

With the new pricing... not so much. Just get SUICA unless you're going all the way from Sapporo to Fukuoka and back.

While the IC card is great and a must-have, the reusable ticket for entry/exit of JR stations isn't exactly inconvenient. If you haven't been back in a while the JR pass is even more convenient than it once was, you can now book your shinkansen reserved seat tickets at the kiosks like you would have to do anyway for an adhoc one, no more having to go into the office. (I think you can also do it online as well but I didn't experiment with that, I was satisfied with the kiosks or just yolo'ing it with snagging an unreserved seat.)

At least in 2023, online was still fragmented / unnavigable to foreigners or just broken. The kiosks worked well though but we had to be shown the right ones.

I just bought it online a two weeks ago and it was super easy, they even send you frequent reminders before your trip so you don't miss it: https://smart-ex.jp/en/index.php

You can do it online as long as you purchase your JR pass from the official JR-operated websites (https://japanrailpass.net/en/ -> https://www.japanrailpass-reservation.net/), and not through any of the third-party authorized resellers (e.g. jrpass.com, which appears to have won the SEO game). I was able to book tickets on specific trains online quite conveniently through the same website that I purchased the pass. While I still needed to go to a kiosk to print out tickets, I feel like I reaped the benefits of it by being able to snag windows seats early on a few scenic yet nearly full trains.

the kiosk factor is great to hear. Ive tourguided foreigners around several times in the past and having to wait on them to do everything seperately in the office always took the wind out of my sails when getting around.

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