Originally Posted by
jib71
Are you planning any long distance rail travel apart from the Tokyo-Kyoto roundtrip and the journey between Narita and Tokyo? If those are the only inter-city trips, you might be better off without the pass. You might consider that the savings of perhaps 5,000 yen per person (assuming you use it for 2 X Narita Express and 2 X Shinkansen) are outweighed by the constraints. If you do without the pass, you have far more trains to choose from - Nozomi departures are far more frequent than Hikari.
Alternatively, you could consider purchasing a package, which includes rail fares and hotel booking. In that case, advance purchase from abroad is possible, and you can tell agent about your requirements.
That's probably good advice -- I think in addition to 2 x N'Ex the only other use we'd make of the pass other than the Kyoto trip would be the Yamanote line.
I have a message into Japanican whether they will be able to book wheelchair spots on their overnight Kyoto packages, and so that may be the easiest if they can. Otherwise, do you have any idea what the process would be if I wanted just to try to reserve a Nozomi wheelchair spot? I can't seem to find any information on that on line. Can I just go to a machine somewhere a few days before?