Steve Weagant

i have looked at many discussions of Railpasses and have seen only that one should not plan on doing several seat reservations at Narita, and that on some occasions the wait to by a NEX ticket was about 30 minutes.

Is all of this done at the same ticket window, or is there a separate line for buying tickets and another for buying passes?

abmj-jr

You can do everything at once. That is part of the waiting time. Folks are activating Rail Passes and reserving seats, all with the same agent.

Who said you should not do advance reservations at NRT? I do at least the first day's reservations right there at the NRT JR Service Center. If I have an early departure planned for the next morning, I'll reserve that one at the same time as well.

To be clear, the time to activate a Rail Pass and reserve seats is less than 10 minutes - more like 5 if you don't have a complicated itinerary or are not making seat reservations. The time is taken up waiting on line as there are often many people doing exactly the same things. That is a major reason some of us who have done these things before seem to be in a hurry immediately upon arrival of the aircraft at the gate. We are getting there first and are at the head of that line.

Steve Weagant

Thank you. I read posts where somebody tried to reserve several trips at once and the agent said they only do a couple. I have no personal experience. It would make sense to me that Narita is not the place to make two weeks worth of seat reservations for a pass. I can see that it would be normal to have a 30 minute wait at the station when multiple international flights are arriving in the afternoon.

mapleg

Absolutely agree with you. I too have seen trip reports and blogs where people encourage others to book all their trips for 2 weeks upon arrival. Only someone totally clueless about the Japanese rail system would propose that sort of booking plan.

Totally unnecessary and wastes the time of others waiting to exchange their passes. Sure,book your N'Ex into Tokyo and maybe a long distance journey for the next day. It's not like Japan is going to run out of trains and ticket windows in the 2 weeks one would be there.

abmj-jr

Absolutely. The nice thing about rail in Japan is that there is always a JR Service Center at every larger station and a ticket window everywhere. I like to get the first day or so done in advance but then go into the service center upon arrival at each main stay to arrange onward reservations. There is no need to try to do 2 weeks of travel all at once and it can be counter-productive when plans change on the fly.

evergrn

I've had at least a couple instances at NRT and KIX JR travel offices where I tried to get seats for that day's NEx/Haruka plus seats for a couple more trains (probably bullet train) later on in the trip, and I was told by the staff he wouldn't help with all of them. I generally wouldn't try to do something like that, so I'm guessing those segments must've been critical to my itinerary in what must've been a busy travel season (eg, new years, obon). As others have said, it'd be crazy and unnecessary to try to secure 2 weeks' worth of train travel in one go upon arrival at NRT. On the other hand, if there's no line, then you can push it and take care of quite a bit in one go. Even with a long line, I think it's more than reasonable to validate the pass, get seats for that day's NEx, and maybe ask to reserve seats for just one more trip on a later day that's important to you.

The wait at the JR office is completely unpredictable. There could be zero wait. But when I arrived around Christmas time a couple months ago, a snake of a line was forming from outside the office. I've never seen a line that long at NRT's JR travel office, and I bet it would've been at least an hour wait. Something like that would be highly unusual. Sometimes you show up and you're only the third in line, but that could be a 3min wait or could be 15min. Some people just take forever at the counter for whatever reason. Can't give any average wait time due to the wide variation (depending on whether/not it's busy travel season) but, in my experience, the total time spent at the office including wait time is <10min more often than not.

abmj-jr

I have never seen that but if I did, I'd probably just pony up for a paid ticket to Ueno, Tokyo or Shinagawa and exchange for the Rail Pass there. An hour of my time is definitely worth the cost of a Skyliner or N'Ex ticket.

evergrn

I don't know what was going on that day. I wanted to get the discount price as a foreign passport holder. Since the travel office had that huge line, I went instead to the manned JR ticket counter (can't get the discount on the machine). But even the wait there was 30min! Anyways, I've never experienced this before, but it goes to show anything can happen with the wait time. Some say get on the train without the tokkyuken and settle it with the conductor. I try not to do that because it goes against what they want you to do (ie, have tix bought in advance) and especially on NEx since there's PA announcement at the station saying there's no tokkyuken sale onboard NEx (even though, in reality, it's possible).

MSPeconomist

AFAIK the discount rail passes for foreigners must be purchased in advance; they're not sold in Japan. However, you must validate them before the first use for the right date.

My experience in dealing with JR ticketing matters at NRT is to expect about a half hour wait upon arrival at T1 on a TPAC from the USA. Given this, the Friendly limo bus can be faster (and IMO more convenient) than the NEX to Tokyo Station.

abmj-jr

This is true for the country-wide Rail Passes but there are a variety of local-area Rail Passes that can be purchased in Japan at selected JR Service Centers.

At any rate, I think it was assumed that the OP meant "exchange" the Rail Pass rather than "purchase," since the thread title referred to "time to validate." I know I did.

Good point, though.

mapleg

I have totally given up on exchanging any vouchers or buying regional JR passes at NRT on arrival. Line ups take too long. My normal plan now is to just head over to the Keisei line and I usually just jump on the first train--the Limited Express/Skyliner or Sky Access depending where I am heading (but I usually stay somewhere between Ikebekuro and Ueno/Asakusa if arriving at NRT)

Hubbabridge

I agree, I don't validate the pass at NRT the queues are too unpredictable and there is a high probability of being stuck behind someone who is doing this for the first time. Go to Ueno/Shinagawa and do the validation there.

Steve Weagant

You could have been stuck behind me if I didn't take advice to validate pass later. I'm assuming this could be done at shinjuku?

msb0b

Yes: http://www.japanrailpass.net/eng/en009.html

But you would have to pay the fare from airport to the station yourself.

RichardInSF

Yes, there is an exchange office on the northeastern side of Shinjuku station.