Other than expense, are there any major drawbacks to structuring travel around Shinkansen access?

8 comments

1. The expense can be mitigated by purchasing the JR Pass, giving you unlimited train travel on almost all JR services for the period of the pass

2. >Technically if you had unlimited Shinkansen access it would be easy to travel a lot of destinations in Japan quite easily.

   But you have. It’s called Japan Rail Pass.

   >In particular if you stayed at Takasaki, Saitama, Fukushima, or Morioka, you’d have a chance to access travel on Shinkansen in three directions.

   Directions are not as important as it’s where you want to go. Most people go to Kyoto, Hiroshima, etc, which is in the totally opposite direction.

   >I can imagine some drawbacks would be, that there’s so much to do and that is accessible in Japan, that you can travel by local transit to experience Japan anyways.

   There is NOT a lot to do around Shinkansen stations, because Shinkansen prioritise speed over local access.

   I am not sure how you quantify ‘local transit’. Taking a bus from Shinkansen station? Taking a local train from Shinkansen station? Because if you are only consider walking distance from Shinkansen station, there’s almost nothing.

   Most if not all tourist attractions can be access easily using public transport anyway. Japan railway system covers a lot of places.

   I am still not sure what you are actually asking here. I mean, if you are travelling across prefectures it’s more than likely you will be using Shinkansen as part of your transit.

3. As a foreign tourist on a 1-2 week trip there aren’t many drawbacks. A JR pass also covers local and express services (with a few exceptions), so if you want to get off the beaten path you could take the Shinkansen for most of the distance then transfer to a standard JR route.

   Tokyo districts with direct Shinkansen access (Chuo, Shinjuku, Shinagawa) would be more typical as a home base for this type of trip than Takasaki and Saitama. You might have fewer separate Shinkansen lines at the the major Tokyo stations, but you’ll have access to a lot more local and express lines, plus have more options for short trips.

   On the other hand, if you’re planning a ski trip or want to see everything from Kagoshima up to Hokkaido in a week then you’re probably better off planning flights and local travel rather than Shinkansen routes.

4. One of the saddest things IMO is the obsession with trying to travel all over Japan when we visit. I did this on my first two visits. Then realised that I was missing out on so much.

   There are some good regional passes that include Shinkansen but are spread over longer periods so you dont rush as much.

   Love the local trains.

5. What you describe as a drawback is actually not one.

   When you plan your itinerary, you do the long part using the shinkansen, then you you do the rest using limited express or local trains depending on where you want to go. Not using the shinkansen is possible, you can do Tokyo-Kyoto without using the shinkansen. It take 2h15 by Nozomi Shinkansen and 7h15 usgin local and limited express train. So it a waste of time to not use the shinkansen for long distances. And in the scenario you have unlimited access to the Shinkansen, actually we call in a JR Pass, then you have unlimited access to any speed of JR train.

   I can give some examples or using shinkansen an “local” train.

   If you want to go to Takayama from Tokyo, it is not possible to go all the way by Shinkansen. You have to major options, that is Shinkansen to Toyama or to Nagoya, then a limited express to Takayama.

   If you want to go to Onomichi, the Shinkansen station, Shin-Onomichi, is further inland and the local Onomichi station is closer to the see, and next to the touristic attractions. So if you have a rail pass, I would advise to stop at one of the station next to it, Mihara or Fukuyama (that is both shinkansen an local station) and take the local train to Onomichi. Otherwise you would have to take a local bus from Shin-Onomichi to Onomichi station.

   So the real drawback of Shinkansen is actually the cost. If you are doing long distance, flying might be cheaper and faster. At leas, if you are a foreign tourist, you can get a JR Pass and possibly save money.

   So you might ask other questions instead. Is there drawbacks to only use JR. Yes, some area are not covered by JR, but you can take train from other company too, so with proper planning, you can go to a lot of places. Next, is there drawbacks to only use train, yes, not all attractions are next to train stations, so you might have to use other mode of transport such as bus, ferry, etc to access. So if you plan accordingly, you can go to even more places. So last question, is there a drawback to only use public transport ? Yes, in some cases, there is no public transport, or or the frequency is low and the schedule make it impossible to do what you want to. That is especially the case in countryside or remote area.

6. After reading your comments, I think your question was too general and not touching what you want to do.

   I think that what you are planning does exactly fall in the same trap as what you critique, that is going to fast and not taking time to reflect on your way to travel.

   It is true that most people plan short trips of more or less 2 weeks, but I do not agree that most people have a ” try-to-do-everything-everywhere approach”. Most people try to do the most they can for the small time they are able to be in Japan. Yes, there is some people who over-plan and there is those who try to hit too many cities in a short trip and miss a lot of locations in between, that is especially true with people who try to make the most out of a rail pass. The thing is that many people are also able to be flexible, while hotels might be booked, most of the time it is quite easy to change the day to day plan when you spend several days in the same cities, adapting your plan based on what you likes or not. One good example is what people call “temple fatigue”, that for me is the typical case of planning something you do not know if you would like and ending up not liking it that much. People do take time to think about what they like or not and do change their plan accordingly.

   If you want to take time to think about how to travel and what you liked, it sound as you have not been to Japan yet, so if you are not in Japan now, then you will not be able to use the Welcome pass, as it’s only on sale unlit February, then after that, only the pass for tourist visa holders will be available, so not available for you if you are there for a year.

   So with the plan you have, I see 3 main problems, some that you try to solve, but fail to.

   First, you want to go slowly and take time to see things, but you actually do the same mistake as the people who want to maximize the use of their rail pass and make the most out of it. To take your Takasaki example, you would rush to take 3 days to visit some of the further locations on your list of 6 and you would have to rush for these days and potentially miss a bunch of things in the area. That is exactly what you should try to avoid, those “intense sightseeing days” as you call them are for me the rushed experience that you should avoid.

   Second, selecting your base according to the shinkansen station is a mistake for me. As someone else pointed out, the problem is not that the area are not populated (actually, it’s the opposite, you need people to justify the shinkansen), but that the attraction might not be next to the shinkansen stations. So the problem I see is that after your 3 days visiting location further, you will be “stuck” in an area that you selected for it’s shinkansen station and not the nearby attractions. What do you plan to do for 10 days in Takasaki for example ? There is just so much you can do there and to fill 10 days, fur sure you will have to take local bus or train for up to an hour to see different things… unless you want to sit somewhere and take a full day to reflect on your previous experience. Personally, I do take time to reflect, that is when I take a break to eat ice cream while looking at a gorgeous Japanese garden, when I soak in the onsen after a day of sightseeing, or back at the hotel when I write down my thought and impressions about what I saw or experience.

   Third, if you make a plan for 2-3 months, you are already taking a decision on the way you travel. You do not give yourself time to reflect and think on your way of traveling and what you like. Yes, people plan their trip than when to go back home, they can think about the way they will plan the next based on their experience.

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   I’m sorry if this is rude, but I do not see your plan as “pure action and pure reflection”. For me your plan is “rushing sightseeing and missing things as you have no time” followed by “idle time doing nothing.

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   What I think would work better with what your idea would be to start with 2 to 4 weeks in one of the big urban area such as Tokyo or Kansai. Take your time to leisurely visit the area, do day trips or overnight trips to different areas around to see what you like. Temple and shrines, castle, garden, onsen, hiking, historical neighborhoods, modern city, etc, here is so much options. Take this time to reflect on what you like and what you do not like as much, then finalize the plan for your first trip. Next, you can give a try to move around Japan. For example you can take 2-3 weeks to move between Tokyo and Kyoto. You might want to select fewer cities to stay for a week in each, or what I would probably personally do is 1 to 4 days in each city along my itinerary. Then you can take a couple of weeks in the next big area to again do day trips and reflect of how you liked the time you were moving from city to city. Think about the activities you liked, how many days in each city do you thing it good, how much do you want to plan in each city before going, etc. and while doing so, you can complete the plan for the next part of your trip, with a higher confidence in your planning as you would have experienced it before.

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   Maybe I’ve misunderstood something in your plan too. I would be interested to hear your impression.

7. for one JR pass only allows you to use the Hikari or slower (more stops). That’s why we never bought a JR pass for Tokyo to Kyoto and back

   Edit: missed the resident part.

8. You get JR buses & boats as part of the JR pass and non JR buses are not expensive. We based two trips around using the shinkansen including one with a ski break and everything worked out well.