I just bought my rail passes online for our trip to Japan in late April; I’m an anxious traveler and wanted everything to be taken care of now haha. I’m sure some of this info won’t be new or novel, but thought I would share a summary all in one place if it’s helpful for someone else!
* Tickets: Shinkansen from Tokyo – Nagoya (JR West); Hida Express Nagoya – Gero (JR Central); Shinkansen from Nagoya – Kyoto (JR West)
* My original plan was to buy the shinkansen tickets on SmartEx, but none of my cards worked on the site or the app, including my SoFi mastercard.
* I ended up purchasing all tickets on JR West directly [https://www.westjr.co.jp/global/en/](https://www.westjr.co.jp/global/en/) and it was a simple process once I figured out the website. The best way I found was to go to the homepage and type origin and final destination under “Timetable & Route Finder” black box. It will then allow you to filter for time of arrival and modify transfer times to your liking, etc. What I liked about booking on JR West directly is that it services JR Central online as well, so if you’re like me and going to Gifu then you can buy everything at once in one booking. I did make a mistake on one of my tickets, and was easily able to cancel/refund the trip and start over which was nice (so much nicer than booking on Amtrak in the US lol).
* I made 2 separate reservation bookings – the Tokyo to Gero route and then Gero down to Kyoto route.
* **Biggest surprise was that JR West took my Capital One Venture Visa card with no issue!** I was fully prepared for problems to come up given everything I’ve read about challenges with using visa (or US cards in general) to purchase on Japanese websites. But it all worked great on the first try. I think my SoFi mastercard would have worked too, but the bank kept trying to freeze the transaction so I gave up and switched to my Visa and it worked.
* Our plan is to pick up our tickets in person at Tokyo station once we arrive. Per this sub (thank you!), the guidance is to find the orange e5489 logo in the JR Central section of Tokyo station and present our pin #s and card used for booking. I will update later on how that process went if folks are interested.
by Schmoopy21