Our final destination is not Osaka, but Hakata.

using the night transportation helps to use sleep time to travel distance.

Shinkansen doesn't work in this case if we want to take the earliest possible Shinkansen out from Osaka or Okayama to Hakata.

The initial plan is to take Sunrise from Tokyo to Okayama, arrival the following morning then immediately change to Shinkansen to Hakata.

Edit: found this Japanese site where you can see the pix of Bus facilities in case anyone else might be interested or for future reference.

http://www.matchan-net.jp/bus/howto/index3.html

They are deep recliner seats. according to the description, the recline can reach almost horizontal level. There is foot rest, slippers, blankets. In fact they look like the First class Shinkansen seats to me. Luckily JR Pass allows for the regular bus (only good on Dream, cannot be used on New Dream, which instead of departing from Tokyo station, it departs from Shinjuku station.)

It sounds to me Dream is better than Y seat, the Y seat you referred to probably is the cheap Young 18 buses - which has 4 seats one isle versus the regular night bus which has 3 seats 2 isles. The Young 18 costs only 5000Y one way, versus the regular Dream costs 8610Y one way. So I pretty much the Y type seat you mentioned must be the Young 18.

Edit : the total time is approx 8.5 hours between Tokyo and Osaka. They turn off light once bus departs. I dont see how you cannot get 5 hours sleep.

Timetable : http://www.jrbuskanto.co.jp/mn/ceindex030.html


[This message has been edited by Happy (edited Mar 21, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Happy (edited Mar 21, 2004).]