Explore

We're leaning towards buying a Green Car Japan Rail Pass for a week. Tremendous value (just $89 more than standard class, and rates don't seem to have changed in a decade).

Do we need to bother with seat reservations in October? We prefer to sit where we want after boarding the car, not to mention saving the time spent in reserving. Although many local trains don't have Green Cars, they may not accept reservations either.

abmj-jr

You won't need advance reservations before arriving in Japan but Green Car seats are all reserved so you will need to reserve them before travel.

I'd suggest making your seat reservations at the same time you activate the exchange order and receive your actual Rail Passes. The best time to do that is immediately upon arrival in Japan, at the Japan Rail Service Center at Narita Airport - or Haneda if that is where you will arrive. You can also reserve seats for any deluxe express or limited express trains at the same time or at each station you arrive at while moving around the country. October is the start of fall color season so trains are still pretty full for those trains you can access with a Rail Pass. Remember that you must purchase the Rail Pass exchange order before you arrive in Japan. Most of us use on-line or phone order services from authorized travel agents.

Local line trains have no seat reservations so you can't do that anyway. Just walk on your desired train, showing your Rail Pass.

It is pretty easy to figure out potential trains and have a written list before you leave using HyperDia. Most JR agents speak English but they appreciate it when you have your needs written out as it is easier to understand. They are pretty helpful about fulfilling requests for seats together, aisle or window seats, etc.

http://www.hyperdia.com/en/ . Remember to use the "Search Details" screen and uncheck "Nozomi/Mizuho/Hayabusa" as those trains are not available to Rail Pass users.

EDIT: I just noticed that you are a UA 1K in the SF Bay Area. That suggests the possibility you might choose to arrive in Japan via Kansai International (KIX), which is outside Osaka and relatively close to Kyoto, rather than Tokyo. That is actually my preferred access route to Japan via SFO. If you choose to do that, it is even easier to exchange the Rail Pass and make seat reservations at the KIX rail center, on the second floor of the Arrivals Hall and across the street by way of the elevated walkway. Either way, NRT, HND or KIX, you can take care of all the Rail Pass and rail seat reservations in one place, immediately after arrival.

Explore

We've discovered the excellent HyperDia trip planner site through the equally fantastic Man in Seat 61 site, the best gateway to rail travel worldwide.

That said, we like to travel on the spur of the moment, so making seat reservations days ahead of time doesn't work. Just curious, if you do board a Green Car, perhaps without a reservation and look for the seat location you want, are seats with reservations marked in any way so you can avoid them?

Also, if you are able to get a "just-in-time" reservation at the departure station, can you do that via a machine, selecting the seat location from an on-screen map presented to you - or you do have to work through railway staff?

Thanks.....

armagebedar

No, but Green Car seats are rarely full, so when the attendants comes to check your ticket, they will inform you of which seats are available to your destination.

You can do either, though you can't select the exact seat via the ticket machines on the Tokaido Shinkansen -- you must do it via a manned counter. JR East and JR West don't have this limitation, IIRC.

abmj-jr

Shinkansen trains are divided into cars that are for reserved seats and cars that are for passengers without reservations. They are clearly marked and easy to locate on the platform and no cars are mixed reserved and non-reserved. Rail Pass users who make seat reservations but miss that train for whatever reason commonly just abandon the reservation and catch the next available train, sitting in an unreserved car.

If you sit in a reserved car, green or not, without a reservation, the conductor may very politely show you the way to the unreserved car, which is not a green car. Seats are not marked in any way as to which are reserved and which are not. There is no way for you to tell. The conductor has a handheld device that shows him all of that and he will know if you "belong" in that seat or not. If the car is not crowded or reserved for downstream-boarding passengers, he may let you stay, showing you which seats are available, but I personally wouldn't count on it. I have seen it happen both ways.

For green car, I'd think you would be ok just arriving a half hour or so before departure and stopping into the "midori-no-madoguchi" (green window) ticket office to have an agent make the reservations. I am not aware of a way to do that through a machine. Making them in advance permits you to be a bit more selective in seating. Waiting until the last minute means accepting whatever seats happen to be left. Showing up at the train without any reservations at all usually means being relegated to the unreserved cars and competing with everyone else for any seats at all. Even if you are permitted to stay up front, you will be left with whatever seats are open.

Japanese trains tend to be very busy and well utilized. Most of the prime time shinkansens will be full or close to full. Just because a seat is unoccupied when you board does not mean it is not reserved by someone boarding at the next station.

If you happen to inadvertently arrive at a peak or busy time, like some obscure national holiday, you might actually find the train you want completely booked up, even if you try make reservations. I had that happen immediately after arrival at Narita the last time I was there in the fall, last year. Fortunately there was another train less than an hour later that had a few seats left and I only had to kill about 45 minutes at Tokyo Station before continuing on to Sendai. You just never know.

Steve Weagant

i will be traveling with a friend. We are both hard core rail enthusiast desiring window seats on certain sides of the train.

I've already created a detailed itinerary for each day. So if I print out the itinerary and show it to the reservation agent will they be able to help with something like the following request that is typed?

Wednesday March 30th 2016
Depart Tokyo 8:33 a.m. SHINKANSEN HIKARI 505
Arrive Shin-Osaka 11:26 a.m.
Depart Shin Osaka 11:59 a.m. SHINKANSEN SAKURA 555
Arrive Kagoshima-chuo 4:03 p.m.
Depart Kagoshima-Chuo 4:30 p.m. SHINKANSEN SAKURA
566
Arrive Hakata 6:01 p.m.

2 window seats. Right side. Green class

Thank you

abmj-jr

Yes, that is similar to the way I do it. I put departure time and station, train name and number and arrival station all on one line, for each train leg. As each is called up on the computer, I ask for window or aisle and preferred side (ie "Fuji-san side," etc.) I always hand them my Rail Pass first, then proceed with specific requests.

Most major JR stations will have at least some agents who speak English but even those appreciate having the specific trains written out as it is easier to read than to hear and understand. I have had them see me looking at my itinerary and ask if they could look at it while they look up the trains. I just fold it so that day's trains are displayed and hand it over. They give it back with my Rail Pass.

There is no guarantee you will get everything you desire. The trains tend to be pretty busy. But making reservations a day or so in advance will definitely help.

Since I am a "belt and suspenders" type of guy, I often have a separate sheet printed up with alternatives in case my first choice of trains is not available. I've only needed that once, when I inadvertently arrived on a national holiday and my planned train was completely full. The second choice had a few seats left so I was only 45 minutes or so later arriving at my overnight stopover. That is unlikely to happen on the vast majority of days but it can happen.

Steve Weagant

this is pretty much how I was doing it. I'll follow the advice of one train per line.

ksandness

Sorry, but why are you going to Hakata via a 27-minute layover in Kagoshima? That's kind of like going from San Francisco to Los Angeles via San Diego.

abmj-jr

You know, I missed that. Seems really inefficient.

ksandness

Yes, relying on Hyperdia can lead you into some odd routings. When I was planning my last train trips (Tokyo to the San'In Coast to Hakata and then Beetle hydrofoil to Korea in one year and Hiroshima to a circle tour of Shikoku to Tokyo in another year), Hyperdia suggested some routes that made me pause and think, "I suppose one could go that way, but it would require a lot of backtracking"

Fortunately, I know Japanese geography well enough to know which routes make sense.

I highly recommend using Hyperdia in conjunction with a map of Japan, which would reveal, for instance, that you have to go through Hakata to reach Kagoshima.

Steve Weagant

we wanted to ride the entire length from Tokyo.

ksandness

Since there's only one line on the Kyushu Shinkansen, you would be seeing the same things twice.

You may want to look into returning via one of the conventional train lines and taking in Nagasaki and Mount Aso (west coast) or Miyazaki and Beppu (east coast--what Yellowstone Park might have looked like if private interests had each been allowed to buy a geyser).

If you are returning to Tokyo, I suggest taking the "back way" from Nagoya on the Chuo Line. This goes through some different scenery behind Mount Fuji and is less developed than the Shinkansen route. You end up at Shinjuku Station.

Even the non-Shinkansen trains in Japan put Amtrak to shame.

Steve Weagant

Nimbys (not in my back yard) have destroyed America. In fact democracy has caused the decline too because there is an inability to develop a unified transit plan like there is in japan. The eastern half of the USA and California would definitely benefit from a Japanese style transit system.

m3red

Just in Japan - please book for all routes Asap for the green car. Loads of ordinary seats on each train - green car is totally worth it in my view.

It was a nightmare turning up wondering if we'd get a seat. Turned up and hour before to book a seat and was told it was sold out. The conductors on all trains found us seats but it was quite stressful.

On the first day the ticket guy booked us seats for the next few days but booked the ordinary car not the green one... annoying and caused stress and inconvenience especially with the luggage.