HK5 Japan: Chapter 8 “JR Pass and Metro”
First thing first, I finally found the time to go to the Japan Rail (JR) Ticket machine on this day and buy out tickets to Nagoya. In the end we decided since we are not adventuring out of Tokyo or Kyoto and we were planning on using a car service to and from the airport that paying $140-250+ for a JR Pass didn’t make sense. If you plan on traveling remotely then I forgo the JR Pass. The Meto lines are so extensive in all the major metros that you can just use Suica to pay for your entry in and out of the stations. You can also use the card in restaurants, stores and vending machines. Trust me, you are going to be using vending machines ALOT.
Fair warning your credit cards or debit cards might not work with the credit card machines. None of cards work for some reason. We opted to pay in cash instead. Tickets reserved, we headed out to a special surprise but a. Few days later we ran into more problems traveling the Japan Rail. Now don’t get me wrong, traveling JR is fast and nice. We opted to do green seats for the 2 hour ride to Nagoya and the one hour ride onto Kyoto. In Nagoya, I decided to wait till we got their to buy my ticket. There were plenty of seats on the train and I think you only need to reserved seats if you are riding the train into a metro area during rush hour. Keep in mind rush hour at night on Monday through Friday can last till at least 8pm.
In Nagoya, I am not sure if I was scammed or not, but I was required to purchase two separate tickets from two separate machines. In Tokyo, I just bought one ticket. Now it was not a significant amount, the price just jumped 10 bucks for each ticket. Personally I have two issues with Japan Rail.
Get your shit together! Having different tickets requirements at different stations a
Dude you best step down from beating that chest! All of our metro station experiences were simple and friendly. The men who man the Shinkansen gates like to not only talk over their female counter parts but they also like to pull the power card. Things like snatching tickets out of fellow female team members and the one that almost set me off, holding a hand up to the fellow female agent face to stop her from speaking English to us. I finally turned away from the male agent and asked for her help.
Overall, I have to say, all of the metro lines were seamlessly. I fear the JR lines are going to cause complete chaos and headaches for all those people planning to attend the 2020 Olympics. Bottom line our experience on the Metro and JR system was fantastic. We really loved traveling around Tokyo especially by trains. Kyoto was another story. The trains seemed to be more filled than Tokyo.