Advice on 21-day pass or individual tickets and other questions

Hello Cassia!

I see you have a ton of travel planned, to explore all around Japan.

I checked your itinerary for the JR Pass, but am not sure if a 21-day JR Pass would be the best option. I'm not sure how set you are on dates, but with a little bit of tweaking, a 14-day Japan Rail Pass could be great. This is what I have in mind:

Consider starting your pass on the 18th, and visit Nikko on this day. Normally this trip can cost a lot using the Shinkansen, so you start with great value right away. Your 14-day pass would then be valid until the 31st, right in time to return to Tokyo before the pass expired.

This would allow you to cover all otherwise expensive bullet train travel and help you visit all the places in between.

Kyoto and Osaka are pretty big, they are great to explore on foot but I'd still use the local JR Network (included) and Metro (not included) from time to time.

Kind regards,
Daniel

Thank you! This is so helpful!

We can be flexible and move the day trip to Nikko - what a good idea!

When I input the new 14-day route into the JR fare caculator, it says to add more travel to make it worth it, but I figure this is because you have more specific information about prices than the calculator, and if we have the pass and use it also for local travel in Kyoto and Osaka, and it will be worth it in the end. Is this correct?

Thanks again!

Hi Cassia,

You should make good savings on the new about route with a 14-day JR Pass. The calculator has had some issues lately where it will return 0 cost for a trip when it can't find the actual fare.

The pass also includes the local JR Network in Kyoto and Osaka. Especially in Osaka is this useful.

Kind regards,
Daniel