how does buying the ticket to an IC card work, I’m growing sick of going to the travel office to pickup paper tickets. I can’t really understand the instructions that read on JReast website. At some point it says something about registering your card at an machine before being able to use it for Shinkansen tickets, but I don’t even know what machine it’s talking about. I’m quite lost on this topic.
2 comments
Use Smart EX: buy the tickets, insert the number of your IC card and done. The day of the trip, use your IC card like you usually do at a normal station, it will give you a paper with your reservation information.
For Tokaido-Sanyo-Kyushu Shinkansen, as the other have said, use Smart EX. Basically you buy the ticket with credit card, and use the linked IC card to go through the ticket gate.
For other Shinkansen, it is more complicated. For short distance, you can use IC card directly and use the non-reserved seats. This require prior registration, as you have probably read. The other choice is to buy Ticketless Ticket on the eki-net and link to the IC card. This works similar to Smart EX.