Kyoto - Osaka - Hiroshima - Hakone - Kawaguchiko - Tokyo

Hi there,

1.) I think your itinerary looks well planned, if you had some extra time a visit to Takayama. Or perhaps a visit to Iwakuni once you are in Hiroshima may be worthwhile.

2.) I think a 7-Day JR-Pass is the best option for the above itinerary. You can use it for all your long distance travel on the Shinkansen, especially the way to and from Hiroshima would otherwise be expansive. Once you are in Kyoto/Osaka I would recommend buying normal tickets as local travel is not very expansive. For instance a one way ticket between Osaka and Kyoto is 540 Yen. For the journey from Kansai Airport to Kyoto I would recommend an Icoca + Haruka ticket. You can use the value on the Icoca card to travel around in the Kansai Area and get a very discounted Haruka ticket.

3.) I would use the pass on day 5 to 11. This way you can use the Narita Express to travel to Narita Airport that otherwise is around 3000Yen, unless you think you may do more that this value in travel on day 4.

4.) I partially already wrote about this in answer 2 but I think you will most likely be best of with buying single tickets. All the local passes in Kansai have certain limitation, which can be rather confusing with all the different transport companies in the area, also you may need to do some careful planning before they become worth their price. For mount Koya, I do think that you may find a [Koyasan World Heritage Ticket] useful when you travel there.

Hope this helps,
-Daniel

Thank you very much for your prompt and wonderful advices! :)

Regards,
-lla001