I ordered them last Thursday (1/3/08)--the "exchange orders" arrived today by FedEx around noon. Excellent service.

We bought the 7 day passes for "green" (first class) cars. The price is Y37,800; we got an exchange rate of Y115.15 to $1.00, so the price for this in dollars was $328.27 each. IACE charges a $15 FedEx fee, which was worth it to us.

The only drawback to the JR pass is that their highest speed shinkansen train on the Tokyo-Nagoya-Kyoto-Osaka-Hiroshima line, the Nozomi, is excluded. The next highest speed train, the Hidaki, is about 30 minutes slower on the Tokyo-Kyoto run (2:45 for 296 miles on the Hidaki, 2:15 on the Nozomi).