Do NOT buy a JR Pass when visiting Japan

If you're thinking about visiting Japan, chances are you're planning to buy a JR Pass. If budget is not your number one concern, I do not recommend a pass. In this video, I'll give you a few reasons why. I hope you find it helpful!

If budget is a concern, I highly recommend you explore videos by @KenshoQuest. They have many excellent videos about maximizing the JR Pass so you can enjoy the full value.

Correction: A viewer rightly pointed out that there are cars on every Shinkansen that do not require a reservation. I completely forgot to mention that because I don’t ride them. Why? Because you may not get a seat—something I’m not willing to risk. But the viewer is right that those can be used with the JR Pass without having to make a reservation. However, I do believe you’ll still have to get a ticket IN PERSON at a JR counter or at a ticket kiosk. You can do this online if you don’t have a JR Pass—another argument for not getting one, IMO.

[ttjoseph]

All excellent points which echo my (admittedly less complex) experience years ago. Thank you for speaking slowly and clearly, but I had to watch on 1.5x playback speed.

[vamos]

Pro tip: If you buy your JR Pass from official JR website, you DO NOT need to reserve your tickets on the day of your journey.
You can reserve online for all your trains for up to 30 days in advance and pick up all your reserved tickets at once when you pick up the pass.

All I did was pick up my JR pass along with my reserved tickets on the day of arriving at the airport. I was given all my printed reserved seat tickets at once and I didn’t have to go to any kiosk at any point in time.

About changing trains, you can easily avoid this by buying individual tickets from Nagoya to Osaka and Osaka to Hiroshima so that you can leave some time before switching to a different train.

You DO NOT NEED reservations to ride the Shinkansen. Cars 1-3 or sometimes 1-5 are for riders without ticket reservations. I just spent a month in Japan with a 2 week JR Pass and was able to travel freely for those two weeks without making a single reservation. Always had a set for me and my partner too.

[ChrisDrummond]

1. You don’t need to reserved seats or have separate with the JR pass. There are non-reserved cars. 2. If you pack light it’s no problem. 3. I almost always stay near a Shinkansen station. It’s much easier and there are lots of business hotels there. 4. The non-reserved cars are full of regular Japanese people.

[geysers]

You can buy and reserve your seats online now with the JR pass for up to 30 days before the date you want to go, then claim the tickets in any reserved seat ticket machine. I've traveled to Japan multiple times with the JR pass before the price hike and still chose to get the JR pass for my upcoming trip despite the price hike because of convenience, not to mention the ability to just hop on to a train and get a non-reserved seat for day trips--believe me, it's a game changer, especially when things happen and you don't get to your reserved train on time. I do think with the price hike lots of people need to rethink getting the JR pass--before, it saved me around $500 per person, but now we're probably just breaking even with a few additional trips that weren't part of the initial plan. I would still recommend it for those who like taking day trips via the shinkansen though!

[larrysiy]

I'm glad I stumbled upon your video. I completely get what you're driving at. I was sort of on the fence re getting a regional JR Pass. This video helped me make up my mind not to buy JR Pass. Thank you!

[Icha]

Thanks a lot, Manya. With the price hike for JR Pass, I'm considering not to buy JR Pass at all. Having visited Japan several times, I do agree that the Nozomi experience is amazing, and reserved seats are really something to look forward to due to the quiet ambience. These days, I also send my big luggage from one place to the next one with courier, hence I just travel with my cabin-sized luggage. It helps a lot, because I don't have to worry about where to put my big luggage. Thanks again!

[amirsavant]

Hi. Thank you so much for making this video. This was extremely helpful.

[btread]

I never had a problem with the JR Pass when I traveled throughout Japan back in 2023. It is worth mentioning that I was traveling solo though. I allowed myself extra time to make the seat reservations so that wasn't really a problem. Also, I only encountered loud tourists one time in the 45 days I was in Japan. All I had to do is smile slightly and not say a word and they got the hint and clammed up. The vast majority of passengers were indeed Japanese and more times than not I was the only tourist on the train. I am going back in 5 days. Will it be the same in 2025? Only time will tell but I will keep your advice in mind.

[sashadavilla]

We didn’t experience any of these issues or concerns with the Jr Pass. It was very easy to reserve seats for 9 people. And like someone else said, you don’t have to make a reservation to ride. There are certain cars that care for unreserved. JR Rail pass is amazing! Very efficient and effective. But hey to each its own.. All of my trains were quiet and not packed with tourists. I think she is just nit picking every little thing. Smh…

[leroyybrown]

Love your video, I just shelled out for the 14 day pass. The reason I did this was because I was having anxiety issues after watching (too) many videos about the Shinkansen. I had enough so I bit the bullet and I feel much better. I’m an experienced Asia traveler but the Shinkansen thing was driving me nuts. I booked on Klook which had better price than JR and they threw in free eSIM (3GB data only) but one less thing to worry about getting off the plane.

[tongayao]

Thank you for the valuable information!🌹

[jaspermoller]

You are not forced onto the SLOWEST trains; only the NOZOMI (the fastest one) is excluded. Which still still lets you board the hikari, which is... oh, I dunno, half an hour slower. The MAJOR inconvenience with the hikari is that you need to change trains in Osaka, so if your plan is to go the whole way to Kyushu in one trip, that's a bit inconvenient. It still beats taking the plane or (god beware) driving, though.

Your point about the tickets may be valid if you are family and have a lot of tickets to manage. For a single traveller like me, it wasn't a problem. And, of course, you can get the reservations at nearly ANY major JR station, e.g., no need to go to Shin-Osaka; Osaka main station also has more than enough of those vending machines. I usually got the reservations for the next leg of my trip when I arrived at the current destination and was thus at a Shinkansen station anyway. For e.g. the Sanyo, it was still sufficient to book a few days ahead. It's definitely not REQUIRED to get all the reservations in one go.

The reservation process is slow but very well guided. And if it is TOO slow, you can always try your luck at an actual counter (brush up your language skills a bit ;-). Besides, I could have ridden half of the trains without a reservation. Not that anyone ever checked the reservations anyway.

Budget-wise, the flexibility is awesome once you are over the threshold where the JR pass is cheaper than individual tickets. Spontaneous trip from Osaka to Himeji? No problem. Decide to head out from Beppu to Yufuin? Already covered. On my last day, I even decided to go on a day trip from Tokyo because my flight was soooo late and I could reach my destination in a little over an hour.

That said, the MASSIVE price increase in 2023 was/is the major bummer, and I had to shuffle numbers a lot to figure out whether it was worth the expense. However, factors like you are not limited to certain regions like with the regional passes also came into play (the one regional pass I might have considered was not available at the time of travel). Since for the next trip, I'm going to stay in the Kansai region, I'll just get a regional pass.

The Green car surcharge is ridiculous indeed; I'd never get that.

IMHO it's primarily a budget decision. Everything else is a minor annoyance (at most).

[drmamdooh]

Hi Manya
Your video is extremely informative and its touched on a lot of points that resonated with me.
I arrive in Tokyo, Haneda airport on the Monday, 14.4.25 at 05:45am. My itinerary invloves us going to kyoto, then osaka and then back to Tokyo before we head home.
My plan is to get a welcome suica for the entire family, hop on the keiku line to the closest shinkansen which i think is Shinagawa or tokyo??then board the nozomi to kyoto
Couple of questions,
1. Can i purchase my nozomi tickets for the family before i get to Japan? Can i buy them at the haneda airport?at the time i land im unsure if the kiosks will be open
2. My youngest is 5yrs old, will she need a ticket as well.
3. Do you think using the welcome suica card for my travels around kyoto, osaka and tokyo should be good enough?
4. Use the isolated nozomi tickets when we have to travel between the tokyo, kyoto and osaka??
Thanks for ur help

[stevenelson]

For most people, the pass won’t pay for itself or, if it does, it’s a negligible amount. The people it works for are people that are going to travel a long distance in a short amount of time. For example a round trip Tokyo to Sapporo will cost about 58, 000 JPY, while the pass is 50, 000 JPY for 7 days. So there are exceptions to the “never get it” general rule. But for most, it’s better to buy individual Shinkansen tickets for the long hauls, then decide if you want a regional pass. For example, the three day Tokyo subway pass is a bargain at 1500JPY. If you’re flying into Kansai and plan on going to Kinoseki Onsen, the Kansai Wide Area Pass can be good to get. Also, expand your searches for shorter trips to more than just JR lines to save money. On our last trip, we went from Kyoto to Osaka on the Hankyu line and saved on the fare. We also went from Osaka to Nagoya on the Kintetsu Line and saved about 1/3 compared to the Shinkansen. It took about 45 minutes longer and left from Namba rather than Osaka Station, but the scenery was quite nice and the train itself was very nice.

So, research is the key to save money.

[nateshf]

My wife and I just wrapped by an 18-day trip and had the full 14-day pass that we used to go to Sapporo and to Unzen and a few places in between. Totally got our moneys worth.

[hpfme]

I think this depends on the route you are going. We went from Tokyo - Kyoto - Osaka & Nara back to Kyoto and then back to Tokyo then Mt Fuji back to Tokyo again within 7 days. We are able to used it not only for Shinkansen but also for JR trains & buses around those cities mentioned. Although we sometimes purchased surcharge for lines not covered by JR pass inly once going to Mt Fuji. We computed the difference of buying a JR pass and total transpo expenses without JR Pass, and on that route I’ve mentioned JR pass is still cheaper. Also you forgot to mention that there are several JR offices for example in Narita or Tokyo station. Just research other vlog for location of JR offices with less people most of the time.

[bettyshee]

We can reserve Shinkansen seat online and collect the paper tickets at machines and JR ticket office

[lovevideos]

I will be leaving for Japan from the US tomorrow and we just decided we would like to spend this Saturday visiting Mt. Fuji. Any advice and how to get there? Should we take the train you just mentioned? If so, how and where to get the tickets?

Don’t know if things have changed but I have recently come back from Japan. I purchased the JR pass with green car. I had planned out my itinerary and knew I would be getting my money’s worth out of the pass. One of my trips I went from Tokyo to Hiroshima I had already seen that it would be a longer trip with a change if I had of went with the standard JR pass, now I don’t know if this is new or not but you can buy a nozomi/mizuho upgrade ticket for the JR pass which wasn’t all that expensive to buy and allows you to use the faster direct trains but you have to purchase the upgrade each time you want to use the faster trains. As the Tokyo to Hiroshima was the longest journey I made I only purchased it the one time and then used the Hikari trains on my way back to Tokyo as I was stopping off at Osaka and Kyoto for a couple of days on the return trip. As for the comfort of the green cars it was exactly the same on all trains I used so I don’t know what you mean it’s a different experience on the Nozomi compared to the other trains. Now I will admit I only used the Kodoma train twice but that was just on a short return trip from Tokyo to Atami so I can’t comment on what that is like long distance but would suggest when people are using the JR pass make sure they pick the Hikari trains only if they don’t want to pay for a Nozomi upgrade as the Kodoma trains are the ones that stop at ALL stations Hikari stop at less stations than Kodoma but more than Nozomi