ksandness

Many years ago, I took students on a tour that happened to hit Osaka during Toka Ebisu, and it was just a fun thing for them to see, an opportunity to buy snacks from the food booths (an important thing when dealing with students that age), and to buy unusual souvenirs. The city itself, like Tokyo, is so large that a festival in one section has little effect on anything else. Unless you're actually in the neighborhood where a major festival is occurring, you may not even know it's going on.

Coming-of-Age Day is fun because you will see young people all over town dressed formally, with the young women usually in kimono, although you may see ethnic Koreans in hanbok. It doesn't really affect anyone unless they have a son or daughter who turned 20 in the past year. My students found that the formally dressed young people were happy to pose for pictures.

466SHH

Thanks to all of you, I've revised my plans. I thought long and hard about Hida-Takayama and decided I didn't want to spend that that much time at the end of the trip on the train. While the location looked lovely, the train ride from Nagoya appeared to be 2.5 hours or so each way. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

So the trip currently looks like this:

Day 1: Arrive NGO mid afternoon; train to Osaka
Day 2: Kyoto (Coming of Age Day)
Day 3: Kyoto
Day 4: Osaka (Toko-Ebisu)
Day 5: Nara
Day 6: Himeji; possibly Kobe
Day 7: Train to Kurashiki; spend 4-6 hours, train to Hiroshima
Day 8: Hiroshima and Miyajima
Day 9: train to Onomichi, spend 4-6 hours, train to Nagoya
Day 10: Ise or Inuyama Castle (still working on this)
Day 11: Depart NGO early morning.

So that brings up a few more questions I hope I can get some help with.

If I have this figured correctly, the most economical train option is to get a 5 day Kansai Hiroshima pass and activate it on Day 6. However, it will only take me to Shin-Osaka on Day 9 and I would need to purchase another ticket to get the rest of the way to Nagoya. Looks like I'd probably be transferring trains there no matter what I did. If I've penciled it out correctly with Hyperdia, I think that totals just under 37,000 JPY and includes the Meitetsu to/from the airport. The first question is, am I correct? and if so, the second question is, how much trouble will it be to use two tickets for the stretch from Onomichi to Nagoya? Will I have to exit and then re-enter at Shin-Osaka?

The third question is about luggage storage and/or forwarding. I will have my carryon sized roller board and a camera backpack. The backpack can't be shipped - everything in it is fragile. Are there lockers big enough for the roller board (or both the roller board and the backpack) at Kurashiki and Onomichi? Am I better off just sending the roller board via takkyubin either to Hiroshima or straight to Nagoya? I really don't want to drag the roller board around Kurashiki or Onomichi if I can avoid it.

Sorry to have so many questions. This forum has been a tremendous help and I really do appreciate it. I was very overwhelmed when I started this (figuring out the multitude of rail passes is a daunting task) but I am beginning to get a grip on this now, with all of your help. Bless you.

SQ319

You can activate your JR Pass on Day 5 instead; that would cover your day trip to Nara.

466SHH

Thought about that. Nara from Osaka is pretty cheap though and it's only a 5 day pass. A lot depends on what I do on Day 10 and whether that is on JR or some other railway. It may be cheaper to have the pass available on Day 10 than on Day 5.

evergrn

Your itinerary looks good.

I just spent a bit of time doing spreadsheet to try and figure out the best option for you.

Your options are:
1).Prepurchase Kansai Hiroshima Pass to be effective Day 5; everything else will be regular purchase.
2).Prepurchase Kansai Wide Pass to be picked up and activated Day 1 in Kyoto Station; prepurchase Kansai Hiroshima Pass to be effective Day 6; everything else (including Nagoya to Kyoto on Day1) will be regular purchase.
3).Prepurchase Jpn Rail pass to be effective Day 4; Trains through Day 3 will be regular purchase.

I priced it all out, and option 1 is your best bet. Option 2 is good, except you'll have to go to the JR Ticket Office in Kyoto Station on Day1 to pick up the Kansai Wide Pass, which is a pain. Option 3 is not economical, compared to the first 2 options.

Asides from Meitetsu to/from NGO:
- Nagoya to Tennoji: 6150
- Tennoji<>Kyoto: 1890x4 [1890 = price of Haruka Express, which I highly rec]
- Tennoji<>Nara: 470x2
- Kansai Hiroshima: 13,500
- ShinOsaka-Nagoya: 5830
- Nagoya<>Iseshi: 2000x2
-------------------------------
Total: ~37,000yen + Meitetsu
(discrepancy btwn our numbers is that I'm rec'ing you take Haruka from Tennoji to Kyoto)

On your day 9, I'd imagine that you simply purchase the ShinOsaka-Nagoya portion ahead of time (eg, in Hiroshima) and then you just simply show your Pass plus the ShinOsaka-Nagoya tix to the station employee as you exit the station. Don't exit through the machine gate but rather through the manned non-machine gate to the side where there's a live human. You can confirm that this won't be an issue when you buy the tix at Hiroshima's JR Office.

evergrn

Every station has a bunch of lockers, unless it's a small station. I'm sure both Kurashiki and Onomichi has many lockers, although the number of mid-sized (which is probably what your rollerboard requires) and esp large-sized ones is always limited. I just googled and saw that Onomichi Sta has 10 mid-sized lockers and also nearby there is a staffed booth where they'll store your stuff if the lockers are full (but open 9a-4.30p only and closed on Sun + holidays). Sounds like you'll be fine. If you really want to be safe, ship your rollerboard from Hiroshima to Nagoya. Kurashiki is probably a bigger station.

SQ319

There's pictures of the lockers at Onomichi in this blog post. http://goawaysam.blogspot.sg/search/label/Onomichi

466SHH

You guys are amazing! Thank you so much. What a terrific community this is.

evergrn, thank you especially for your time to cost the whole thing out and for the advice on taking the Haruka Express. That really was above and beyond what was expected. Having made a few of those calculations myself, I know how time consuming that can be.

My main activity at Kurashiki will be the Ohara Museum and they have luggage storage. I am guessing that I can check the roller board there if all else fails, at least while I am at the Museum.

And SQ319, you are right. I should activate the pass on Day 5 for Nara. I don't know what I was thinking when I posted the quote below. That pass doesn't include Nagoya, so I might as well add the cheap trip to Nara on day 5 and save a few Yen. I'll be paying out of pocket for Day 10 no matter what. Might as well use the pass on days 5-9.

evergrn

No problem, happy to help. Yeah, Haruka is by far the best way to go from Tennoji to Kyoto. It's ~1000yen more, but then it's faster, it takes you direct without transfer, and moreover you get to have comfortable seating instead of crowded commuter train. Think it runs ~2x per hour.

You could consider doing Nara on Day 3 and second day of Kyoto (with Haruka) on Day 5. That way you can get more value out of your Pass. But it's probably only going to make 2000-3000yen difference per person and the weather could change plans and so forth, so you should probably stick to what you feel like doing day by day.

466SHH

Great idea. Why didn't I think of that? Will make the switch.