Originally Posted by
dici
Before getting any JR Rail Pass, first you ask yourself:
1. Will you take more than 3 shinkansen trip? (each trip at least 1 hr 30 mins)
If the answer is no, then don't bother with JR pass, it just not worth it
The plan is to take the Narita Express, Kyoto, Osaka, Himeji, and back to Tokyo. By then I won't have enough time to take the Narita Express back to Narita so I'll have to use another form of transportation or train line. Will the Shinkansen take me to all of those places? If so, is it worth it?
Originally Posted by
evergrn
Any airline is subject to potential delays. ANA is also a decent airline but it's not infrequent that they're delayed up to 30min for arrival into NRT.
If you're coming from America, keep in mind that most people end up waking up at the crack of dawn or even earlier the following day due to time difference.
Customs will be unlikely to be your bottleneck. Immigration queue could be long. If you get through immigration quick, then you'll probably have to wait a while for your bag... if you flew coach and don't have bag priority, then figure 20-35min from parked at gate till your bag comes out. The biggest potential bottleneck may be JR Pass exchange, though.
I don't have bag priority. Is the line at the JR Pass exchange long? Even on a Wednesday? I'll be coming in during the summer so I guess it could be busy.
Originally Posted by
evergrn
If your JL flight is scheduled to land at 16.25 and you're flying Y with checked luggage, then I think the NRT Express train departure time that you'll be able to make will range from ~16:45 with good luck (arrive 25min early, no immigration queue, bags come out 25min after parked at gate, no JR Office queue) to ~18:45 with bad luck (arrive 35min late, 30min immigration queue, 40min JR Office queue).
So I present potential train itineraries with starting time during the above time.
NRT Terminal-2 16:48 -NEx- 17:52 Shinagawa 18:10 -Hikari- 20:58 Kyoto
NRT Terminal-2 17:19 -NEx- 18:27 Shinagawa 18:40 -Hikari- 21:11 Kyoto
NRT Terminal-2 17:47 -NEx- 18:56 Shinagawa 19:10 -Hikari- 21:58 Kyoto
NRT Terminal-2 18:19 -NEx- 19:26 Shinagawa 19:40 -Hikari- 22:11 Kyoto
NRT Terminal-2 18:52 -NEx- 19:59 Shinagawa 20:10 -Hikari- 22:58 Kyoto
Print the above so you can just show it to the JR Office employee and point at the one you want them to book you on at the time of JR Pass exchange, depending on how you're doing with time.
But please verify the accuracy of the above times.
I'll be flying JL17 and it does appear that they land in T2, gate 84.
The timing looks really tight. Am I reading this correctly? The NEx leaves T2 at 18:52, arrives at Shinagawa at 19:59, and I have 11 minutes to catch the Hikari to Kyoto?