Originally Posted by
jib71
Going by train, a 5:19 PM departure from Narita T1 gets you to Nagano by 7:44 PM. The following day, you can get an 8:23 bus and be at Hakuba station at 9:25 AM. Honestly, I think that would be my prefered way of doing this trip, but I guess you might have already booked accommodation in Hakuba for the first night? Or perhaps you have a lot of luggage which makes the JamJam bus a more attractive option? The idea of being jammed in a jamjam bus for hours after a flight leaves me cold.
1. I have accommodation in Hakuba that night - I can still change my plans, but I'd prefer to stay over in Hakuba and minimise traveling the next day.
2. I will be carrying one big, heavy luggage (the biggest size that can be checked as baggage, which annoyingly requires a reservation on shinkansens now) and a carry-on sized backpack. I can wrangle it and carry it up/down stairs for short distances, but not too many (and moving around with it in the snow would suck).
Here's the situation: my options are either a direct bus, or some combination of bus/shinkansen. For the latter, the limiting factor is the last leg from Nagano to Hakuba - frustratingly, those buses seem to stop running during dinner, so there's a bus departing at 6.20pm (which I'm unlikely to catch) and then at 8.30pm.
Taking the 8.30pm bus means I'll reach Hakuba around the same time as the Jamjam bus - it just means a total of 1+ hours milling around Narita/Tokyo JR/Nagano JR with my luggage. I suppose I could find something to do at Tokyo/Nagano stations, but I'd have to pay to store my luggage (would probably have to use the biggest lockers and pay JPY1000 for an hour of storage), on top of having to pay extra for a reserved seat on the shinkansen because of JR's annoying new policy. It's not a huge amount of money, but I'm not sure if I want to pay $10-20 more for an hour of walking around (I've been to both of these places so it wouldn't be new either). That said, you do make a good point about sitting in a bus for 6 hours after sitting on a plane for even longer...
Originally Posted by
travelinmanS
I landed at Narita an hour and a half ago and the line for immigration was at least a half hour to 45 mins long.
Thanks for that data point!