Asia - Tokyo and surrounding areas train schedules and fares

Will be going over to Japan at the end of the month. I need some help to find schedules and fares info. Are there any good sites that will list these?

Shinjuku - Mitaka - Kawagoe - Shinjuku
Shinjuku - Kamakura - Yokohama - Shinjuku
Shinjuku - Hakone - Izu (Atami) - Shinjuku

Need to check if it's beneficial to get a Rail Pass.


thanks

try www.japanrail.com (http://www.japanrail.com)


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UNITED WILL STAND

hi thanks for the quick reply... But japanrail.com only have shinkansen routes

The destinations you list are all quite nearby by Japanese standards, so I very much doubt a Rail Pass would be worth it, esp. since the cheapest ways to get to Kawagoe, Hakone and Kamakura are not on JR but the private Tobu (for Kawagoe) and Odakyu (for Kamakura and Hakone) railways, where the JRP is not valid anyway.

Here's a URL you can abuse to check for connection prices(from airport to anywhere):

http://svc1.ana.co.jp/cgi-bin/ana_ekispert/us/exp.cgi

You don't really need schedules since these are all essentially local destinations and trains run every couple of minutes.

Incidentally, does anybody know if a full copy of Ekisupaato is available on the Web? I used to have the standalone software and loved it.

also try, www.japan-guide.com/e/e2017.html (http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2017.html) or any search engine for tokyo transportation

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UNITED WILL STAND

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">I need some help to find schedules and fares info.

Shinjuku - Mitaka - Kawagoe - Shinjuku
Shinjuku - Kamakura - Yokohama - Shinjuku
Shinjuku - Hakone - Izu (Atami) - Shinjuku

Need to check if it's beneficial to get a Rail Pass.
</font>


From my 2001 JR schedule:

Shinjuku-Hakone: Y2,020 one-way, leaves Shinjuku every half hour between 7:00 and 19:00. Return every half hour from 10:17 to 22:18. As mentioned, this Odakyu line train is not covered by the JR pass.

Shinjuku-Kamakura: by taking JR Yamanote and Yokosuka line trains, this should cost just over Y1,000 one-way. Yamanote trains run every few minutes, Yokusuka trains ~4 times an hour.


If all you are planning to do are those trips, a JR Rail Pass is certainly overkill. However, it will pay for itself should you take the Shinkansen to for instance Kyoto. If your stay coincides with the duration of the pass, two NEX runs and getting around Tokyo on JR trains will also help amortize the pass.

I'm afraid this will be of no use to you, given the timing of your journey, but usually there's an excellent English language rail planner available at http://www.hyperdia.com/ . Unfortunately, it's currently down for "upgrading our server" until mid-December.

As jpatokal says, these are local journeys so a Japan Rail pass is unlikely to be useful. JR East does have a number of local passes, though. See http://www.jreast.co.jp/e_pass/index.html

I did a couple of these trips last week, but starting from Shinagawa rather than Shinjuku. Odawara is the access point for Hakone. The Kodama shinkansen stops there (1 an hour). The fare is about 3,000 yen each way from Shinagawa. The Hakone Souzan Tetsudo line to Gora is 650 yen. The cable car from Gora to Sounzan was not operating for reasons I could not understand. They have a bus replacing it (you still need a cable car ticket, which is 410 yen). The gondola from Sounzan to Togendai is about 1,000 yen (my memory is fading already), and the boat from there to Hakone is a few hundred yen. The bus back to Odawara is about 1,200 yen. Most of the Japanese people doing this circuit had a "free pass" (that's to say, an all-inclusive ticket) but I didn't inquire into the cost.

Kamakura is about 780 yen each way from Shinagawa on a local line; Kita Kamakura is a bit less. The trains are several an hour. From Kamakura, it's about 300 yen on the Enoden line to Hase. The bus back from the Great Buddha is about the same.

thanks for all the useful info. Guess I won't be needing the RailPass this time as I plan a separate trip for kyoto and osaka.

For those of you who have been to Tokyo (and surrounding areas), any recommendations to other places that I should visit?

try nikko & sendai area

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UNITED WILL STAND

I'd like to purchase an Hakone Freepass, as well as make a reservation for the "Romance Car" for an upcoming trip to Hakone, but was unable to find a way to do this online.

Is there a website (even in japanese, i can use babelfish) that is available to do this ?

Thanks.

Hi Yann,

I was just researching this today, so thought I would post this website, it seems to be what you are looking for:

www.odakyu-group.co.jp/english/index.html (http://www.odakyu-group.co.jp/english/index.html)

It has all the information you want for the Fuji Hakone Pass.

Thanks,
DG

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by yann:
I'd like to purchase an Hakone Freepass, as well as make a reservation for the "Romance Car" for an upcoming trip to Hakone, but was unable to find a way to do this online.</font>

You can get Free Passes in Shinjuku station, or pretty much any travel agency, in minutes once you're in Japan. Advance reservations aren't really needed unless you're travelling in super-peak season (Golden Week etc).

Just remember, even if you can't get a seat in the front of the romance car (you certainly want to try if you can), go up to the very front of the train and see if there are any empty seats after you board.

The entire front of this train is a plexi bubble and offers a pretty neat experience.

Of course the time we sat up front on the way home from Izu, we were able to snap some photos of the conductor falling asleep at the wheel.

I don't think this was "Romance" on Odakyu, but it was a similar format withthe glass front.

Memories to last a lifetime.

Scho