If you purchase a voucher for the Japan Rail Pass in the US, can you make a train rez at the online site prior to arriving in Japan or do you have to wait until you pick up the actual pass the rail station in Japan?

naxos,
Although I have only limited experience so far with JR, it should not be a problem to reserve a train just before just before taking it except in cases of heavy travel periods or the Narita Express. I am going to Osaka next Saturday so I will have much more experience in a couple of weeks. However, there is a site http://www.world.eki-net.com/e_Default.asp which I think you can reserve in advance the Narita Express and Shinkansen trains. There should be info on it if you can make reservations if you will be using a JR pass. I believe it can be done. Hope this helps.

In most cases, it's not necessary to book ahead on the Shinkansen, because they run approximately every five to ten minutes. The exception is peak travel periods, and this is the beginning of one of them, spring vacation for Japanese schools.

However, if you're traveling Green Car (first class) that rarely fills up. Also, if the reserved seat cars in second class are full, you can always crowd onto the unreserved cars.

That being said, I've rarely had trouble getting not only a same-day seat in second class, but a same-day seat in the non-smoking cars in second class. In fact, I've had to stand in the non-reserved car exactly once, and that was when I was silly enough to try to travel between cities on a holiday weekend.

Jpn train stations have windows called Midori no madoguchi (green windows) marked with green four-leaf clover symbols. That's where you can request reservations for any train in Japan. If the clerk is afraid to speak English to you, just write out your destination, the time you want to go, and whether you want a smoking or non-smoking car.

But seriously, trains run so frequently that reservations are rarely a problem, and some short line runs don't take reservations at all.

Thanks for the help. I will check out the website- problem is the trip will be during Golden Week. So I hope that there will be space.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by naxos:
If you purchase a voucher for the Japan Rail Pass in the US, can you make a train rez at the online site prior to arriving in Japan </font>

NO

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">or do you have to wait until you pick up the actual pass the rail station in Japan?</font>

YES, Reservations are only accepted once you are in Japan and have activated your rail pass.

I had researched this (8/2001) because we were travelling at a very heavy travel time as well.

(edited to add this) IMO, paying the extra for the First Class (green car) rail pass was worth all the money. There were quite a few trains that we wanted to take and were told they were full until I pointed out that we had a rail pass for first class, once the ticket agents saw this we got on every train we wanted to.

[This message has been edited by Sweet Willie (edited 03-04-2002).]

Sweet Willie- That is just the info I was looking for. Thank you.

You have to make your reservations there & I highly recommend that you do. The Shinkansens between Tokyo & Kyoto that we took were all packed. We were traveling ordinary class & I was glad that we had made reservations which we did in the train stations. When you get your JR pass, there is a brochure that has a toll-free (in Japan) phone # that is staffed w/ English speaking people that were so helpful to me. I called a few times.

Concur with above advice. Go for the Green Car, especially since it will be Golden Week. Many times, you can get your hotel to make reservations for you as well. Good luck.

We just came back from Japan using JR Pass. We traveled in March which is not peak season, but we have 4 people together, and it is hard to get seats together at last minute booking for long haul train (i.e. Tokyo to Osaka). For non-smokers, Oh Boy!, in order to aviod the smoking cars, book asap once you landed in Jpn.

Thanks- I hope the nonsomking option will be available but I am not convinced that during high season it will be possible. Appreciate your input.