this weekend i’m going to osaka and today i got my shinkansen tickets at shinjuku station from a ticket machine.
i was expecting the ¥14,000 fare per ticket i’ve seen everywhere but they ended up being less than ¥6000 each. my total for there and back from tokyo station is ¥11,420?!
i’m especially confused because when i tried to get the tickets at a different station’s ticket machine they were the regular fare. obviously i’m very happy i saved so much money but this is going to drive me insane until i have an answer haha
more information:
-it’s a tokaido shinkansen nozomi
-no i’m not a tourist and i didn’t buy them with the japan rail pass thing
-no i didn’t buy them from the tourist info center at shinjuku accidentally. i got them in the shinkansen ticket office machine by the JR gates
sorry in advance if this is a silly question! ^^
5 comments
If all the tickets machine were at the original price but yours, I would check again your tickets and make sure you’re going to the good direction and with the good train. Most “bugs” happen between the screen and the chair…
You either only bought the basic fare or only bought the super express surcharge. You need both to ride the shinkansen.
You have only bought the Shinkansen supplement ticket. The ticket should write 新幹線特急券 and not 乗車券・新幹線特急券. You need to buy the 乗車券 too, which is another 8910 yen per direction.
You’ve likely purchased the reserved seat fare only (5,610 yen from Tokyo). You also need to get the basic fare ticket which will be the 8,910 yen that you’re missing.
It is a good question.
Shinkansen ticket price is very confusing, because it consists of Shinkansen fare and basic JR fare. Basically, you pay for, first, travelling on JR line and in addition for travelling inside Shinkansen, so in essence you have two different tickets for the same ride. The trick is that when you get off the Shinkansen you can ride the regular JR trains locally for “free”, because your JR fare covers it.
There are probably some rare cases when such pricing makes sense, for example with simultaneous use of Suica, but as it is customary in Japan, if there is a confusing solution and the simple solution, the confusing one will be chosen for everybody.
Besides, ticket vending machines make zero effort to make it easier to figure out, so yeah, people end up buying just half of the ticket and missing their train.
What you need to do is to go to Midori-no-Madoguchi, which is JR ticket office and resolve this issue. More likely than not you will not be able to ride Shinkansen with this ticket.