AlwaysAisle

JR Tokai and JR West have announced that during New Years (Dec. 28-Jan. 4), Golden Week (beginning of May), and Obon (mid Aug.) Nozomi will run as all reserved seating and there will be no non-reserve seating during these periods on Nozomi.

Nozomi runs a train with 16 cars long. Car no. 1, Car no. 2, and Car no. 3 on Nozomi are non-reserved seating. However, during the three major holidays (New Years. Golden Week, and Obon), all Nozomi trains will run as all reserved seating without non-reserved seating.

Passengers with non-reserved tickets will able to ride on Nozomi during these three major holidays as standing room only tickets.

Condition of standing room only ticket:

• Cannot occupy the seats. There will be unoccupied seats at the departure at Tokyo station, and passengers getting on the train at Shinagawa and Shin-Yokohama. But standing room only ticket passengers cannot occupy the empty seats. Trains bound for Hakata, it is possible that there will be unoccupied seats after Shin-Osaka or Shin-Kobe, but still standing room only ticket passengers cannot occupy the seat.
• Standing room only ticket passengers are supposed to be in a deck area of a car only, entrance door and toilet area of the train. Standing room only passengers are not supposed to stand in an aisle of the seating area of a car. However, during the extremely busy times of these three holidays, it is extremely difficult to enforce this rule and often not enforced on over capacity trains.
• Standing room only ticket passengers cannot occupy Green Car. Car no. 8, Car no. 9, and Car no. 10 of Nozomi are Green Car. Standing room only passengers cannot occupy these three cars even for toilet and entrance door deck area of Green Car.

alan11

I saw an article a couple weeks ago saying that starting October 1st (so a couple weeks from now apparently) that the Tokai Shinkansen (JR Central) will start taking online reservations for up to 1 year in advance, as opposed to the current 1 month.
https://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdes...cle/138391.php
But this article has been the only thing I saw about it, and there is still nothing on the JR Central website regarding it, neither on the Japanese or English sites.
https://global.jr-central.co.jp/en/

AlwaysAisle

JR Tokai's Japanese website does have some information about the reservation up to 1 year in advance. Yes, not many details are available on the JR Tokai website so far. But the following is information from the JR Toaki website regarding one one-year advance reservation of the Shinkansen.

• One-year advance reservation of Shinkansen will be available only via the online EXpress Shinkansen reservation service.
• Only limited fare will be available from one year in advance. Possibly if you wait till the current one-month advance reservation, then there will be cheaper restricted discount fares available via the EXpress Shinkansen reservation system or other JR Tokai online services.
• Only a limited number of seats will be available for one-year advanced reservations. It is likely that a one-year advanced reservation is sold out but if you wait till a one-month advance reservation, more seats will become available.

It is highly likely that there will be a schedule change for a one-year advance purchase. If the ticket is for Tokyo - Shin Osaka, then there is Nozomi every 6 min. so schedule change may not be a big deal. If a reservation is for Odawara - Kyoto then schedule change can be a major change. The reservation will be made based on the current schedule and one month before the travel date specific train information and seat assignment will be sent online. Payment is due at the time of reservation is made, but does not say anything about the refund situation,

This is what is available online on JR Tokai and EXpress Shinkansen reservation websites.

Pickles

Except in cases of typhoons, in which case all these carefully-constructed rules go out the window, and all trains are 臨時 and unreserved and all bets are off.

pudgym29

If I read this correctly, this applies only to the Nozomi classification. Slower [i.e.: more stops] shinkansens like the Hikari are not impacted.