Drastic price increase announced for the Japan Rail Pass

15 comments

1. Honestly a major bummer.

2. I’ve used this several times. Pays for itself and makes traveling to less touristy cities possible. Plus I’ve seen half empty trains to those locations. No point now.

3. Feels like a mistake, but I assume they’ve done the math.

4. Honestly the previous price was probably too low but this is too high imo. On the plus side since it’ll be cheaper for me to buy individuals, I can finally take the fastest trains.

5. So i travelled around Japan slowly over 3 months this January – Okinawa to Tokyo. The pass wasnt worth it for me. Using local trains, ferries and intercity buses was ultimately cheaper before this increase as i was staying at least 1 week in each place. This change is likely to only really impact tourists trying to see all the tourist traps in 2 weeks in the Tokyo Osaka Hiroshima circuit but might get tourists using more of the different transport options available or staying in less places for longer.. It’s also worth mentioning that the previous cost hasn’t taken into account inflation that has hit petrol/gas prices as well as service sector pretty harshly.

6. Wtf with the new price!? I bought the rail pass last time, and realized it didn’t save me any money. So I decided to skip that this time. It turned out I was right. Now, you wanna increase 100%? I guess you just don’t want anyone to buy it…..

7. So stupid, Japan has a unique position to be able to offer this service for a low cost with no downside. Price gouging removes the benefit of this great tourism offering. I’ve had the benefit of doing about 8 rail passes and seeing every corner of Japan, it’s such a shame to see the program killed.

8. That’s a planning mistake from JR.

   The purpose of a national rail company is not to make huge profits but to move people so that they spend the money on the local economy.
   With these prices it’s better to rent a car or fly.

9. I just finished used my 14 days pass.
   And at 45k yens I saved money and Time.
   What I didn’t see mentioned here it’s the fact that you have the Mizuno and the Nozomi Line included.
   So you Can do fukuoka Tokyo in 5 hours.
   But honestly if you take a flight it will be cheaper and faster.
   They should have made 2 offers.

10. Used the JR pass before as a tourist, and definitely got my money’s worth; went from Hokkaido to Kyushu and back. Heck, went to Osaka for 90 minutes to have dinner with a friend.

    The JR East pass doesn’t seem to be changing, and is still a fairly deal (that’s available to foreigners with a resident card, too!). It’s great if you want to head up to Aomori/Akita for a long weekend

11. Damn, this will put off a lot of people. They’ll probably use internal flights and busses and it will kill off a lot of tourism outside Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto.

12. If you’re going in November could you lock in the reduced price? And buy it early.

13. That’s almost the cost of a plane ticket.

14. That’s a pretty disgusting increase. The fact it still doesn’t fully include Nozomi is utter horse shit.

15. Japan: “Hey, we need to encourage foreign tourism. Let’s drastically increase the Japan Rail Pass, this will help!”