Hi guys

will be in japan with two other friends for one week. already have our JR rail passes bought. should we also buy the pasmo card? any advice appreciated

thanks

I spent a couple of days in Yokohama last year and got a Pasmo for the subway there. I think that's all I used it for and then turned it in for the refund when I was getting ready to leave. I like having these sorts of cards since it makes it easy to get around. http://www.pasmo.co.jp/en/

It depends on where you are going.

The PASMO and Suica cards are interchangeable in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, but the Suica cards can be used in other cities for local transportation as well. Buy Suica at JR stations and PASMO at subway and private rail stations.

Now if you are going to be only in the Tokyo area, you should get a refund on your JR Pass, since you will never use up its full value. Just get a Suica or PASMO and use it for convenience (no need to buy individual tickets), load it with, say, �10,000, and use it for all your transportation, trains or subways, in the Tokyo area.

Note that the JR Pass is NOT valid on the subways or private rail lines.

If you are going to make a roundtrip between Tokyo and Kyoto or the equivalent distance, then the seven-day JR Pass is worth the money.

We really do need to make this information a separate stickie.

Pasmo and Suica are not only interchageable within the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Pasmo (just like Suica) can be used in other areas outside Tokyo-Yokohama as can be seen in this diagram. Neither Pasmo nor Suica can be used for cross-regional journeys.



https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...nection_en.svg

Clear as mud!

That is a typically incomprehensible Japanese correlation chart.

If you really must know the following 10 IC cards are interchangeable:

Suica (JR East - Greater Tokyo Area, Sendai and Niigata)
PASMO (Greater Tokyo Area)
Hayakaken (Fukuoka City)
nimoca (Nishi-Nippon Railroad - Fukuoka)
SUGOCA (JR Kyushu)
ICOCA (JR West - Greater Osaka, Okayama and Hiroshima Prefectures)
PiTaPa (Greater Osaka, Okayama and Shizuoka)
TOICA (JR Central - Greater Nagoya and Shizuoka Prefecture)
manaca (Nagoya)
Kitaca (JR Hokkaido)

Clear now?

Personally I find this link to be quite helpful. This may be a case where a picture isn't quite worth a thousand words.
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2359_003.html

So Suica or Pasmo within Tokyo?

Exactly

IT is a simplified incomprehensible Japanese correlation chart: ICOCA and MANACA are interchangeable though the relationship is represented by two bidirectional relationships via TOICA

It doesn't mention that you can only use ICOCA on the Hiroshima trams not SUICA etc

More than that ... makes head hurt. [I have a couple of, AFAIK, ICOCA cards w/ some residual value]