14 days in Tokyo with felxible schedule - JR pass?

Hi JJ,

As a 7 day rail pass will cost ¥28,300, you need to spend more than that on JR tickets for one to be worthwhile. Lets get a handle on the costs for your two possible trips:

Trip 1 - Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto

1. Tokyo > Nagoya: ¥10780, (126mins, 366km)
2. Nagoya > Kyoto: ¥5640, (37mins, 147km)
3. Kyoto > Tokyo: ¥13420, (161mins, 513km)

TOTAL: ¥29840 for 3 legs

• 07 day rail pass (¥28,300) saving: ¥1540

Trip 2 - Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima

1. Tokyo > Nagoya: ¥10780, (126mins, 366km)
2. Nagoya > Kyoto: ¥5640, (37mins, 147km)
3. Kyoto > Osaka: ¥540, (28mins, 42km)
4. Osaka > Hiroshima: ¥10150, (104mins, 345km)
5. Hiroshima > Tokyo: ¥18250, (292mins, 894km)

TOTAL: ¥45360 for 5 legs

• 07 day rail pass (¥28,300) saving: ¥17060
• 14 day rail pass (¥45,100) saving: ¥260

Analysis

As you can see you stand to make savings with a 7 day rail pass with both trips. Although the savings if you only do Trip 1 (Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto) are small, I still recommend a rail pass as you retain the flexibility to do any further JR travel totally free of charge. Trip 2 is sufficiently large to make a 14 day rail pass also return some savings to you, however you'll achieve really good savings of ¥17060 if you can do trip 2 within a 7 day period.

Regarding day trips, you can probably do day trips to Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka from Tokyo (roughly 1.5 hours to Nagoya, 2.5hrs to Kyoto/Osaka), however at 5 hours away a day trip to Hiroshima may be a little far from Tokyo - you should aim to stay in Osaka, or overnight in Hiroshima/Miyajima if you travel down to Hiroshima from Tokyo direct.

You can look up precise train timetables and costs at the Hyperdia travel planning website and learn how to use Hyperdia for JR Pass holders through our video blog.

Hope this helps!

Thanks so much for your help! I think we will do the 7 day pass this trip and try to get all our travel in the week. Since we would be really buying time with the 14 day and not sure we will make the longer trip to Hiroshima. :)

One more quick question: today is Tuesday 7/31/2012. We leave in 4 days (Saturday 7/4/2012) Do we have enough time to purchase JR exchange order for it to be delivered to USA before Saturday?
Thanks!

Hi there,

Sounds like a good balance :)

If you place your order within the next 10 mins (I know...) you'll make our cutoff for next day delivery to the US for Wednesday delivery. If you order after this today, then your order will arrive on Thursday.

Hope this helps!

Wow! Thanks for the fast response. I'll get right on it!
JJ