Certificate

The railwaypass was excellent. We are very happy that we orderbedrag it. We traveler all over Japan with it. We doen recommend a plastic card instead of a paper one though because it gets damaged while using it. Also the paper tickets when reserving your seats are not very practicum. It is best if the reservation is on the card as well so you only have to use the one card.

But other than that it was excellent and We definitely recommend to get on when traveling in Japan

We used the 14-days Japan Rail Pass for our trip from Tokyo to Hokuriku (Niigata, Toyama, Takayama), Kyoto, Izu peninsula and Yokohama area. I have used it many times and I’m overall satisfied. As a suggestion for improvement, when digital Suica or Pasmo have become available for use (on smartphones or smart devices), isn’t it the right time to consider moving the JR Pass to digital? Technically it shouldn’t be a big problem (for example using a unique code to activate the pass in an app) and it would get rid of the worries of losing the ticket. Let’s move to the 21st Century already.

It was very unclear where to use the JR pass. Consequently, I ended up paying for a week but only utilized it one time.

My only minor complaint is the need to sign in to the wifi every thirty minutes, but it's such a minor complaint, everything else was golden!

Very satisfied with my experience with rail past. Had it validated at Shinjuku with no waiting and then the very helpful assistant then booked my ride to okamaya. Station staff always very helpful and obliging. Trains themselves were first class and worth upgrade to green car. Made use of food order which worked well

Great frequency of trips etc

Only question I woukd pose than when booking at a machine why need to also provide passport number. Overkill?

But loved the whole experience

Purchased 3 passes for the 14 days service plus WiFi. For some reason one of the three passes would not work after the 5th day of use, we had to show the pass to the gates personnel for passing through.

There is a large queue to activate the JRP. Moreover, you need to travel long distances without staying much in different cities/prefectures in order to make sense economically. In case you have a lot of trips in a short period of time, it makes it very easy to travel and you do not need to worry if you miss your train- you do not lose the value of the ticket- you just book the next. If it did not offer this flexibility and safety- it would not wirth the ticket value.

Overall we found the Japan Rail Pass a good value, though not without its flaws. The biggest pro of the pass was the ability to use the shinkansen system with the pass, along with reserving seats. The pass was also helpful in using the JR lines to travel throughout Tokyo, however, this is the area where the pass started to lose its usefulness. For one, it is very difficult at time to determine if certain train lines are covered by the JR Pass. As foreigners unfamiliar with various areas of Tokyo, we relied a lot on Google and other apps to plan our travel routes - we would then have to cross check to see if those planned routes that utilized various train lines were covered by the JR Pass. It seemed as though in 50-60% of the cases, the train lines we needed to take were not included as part of the JR Pass, and we ended up relying on Suica cards to travel on many trains. There was further confusion as some stations regarding fair adjustments between JR lines and other non-JR lines. All told, if we were to return to Tokyo with no intentions to use the shinkansen, I'm not convinced that the JR Pass would be a good value vs just using a Suica card. One further issue: we signed up for a concierge meet and greet upon arrival at Haneda airport. Unfortunately, it took us over 2 hours to get through immigration, something totally beyond our control, and the JR Rep consequently cancelled our concierge service. I understand that the representative couldn't wait forever for us to get through immigration, though I was in text message communication with them and had informed them that we were less than 10 minutes from completing the immigration process before they informed me they'd canceled our appointment. Since the circumstances were beyond our control, it would have been nice to be offered a refund of this portion of our Pass, so this aspect was disappointing. I did find the JR Pass representatives we spoke with to reserve seats and ask questions to be very helpful, and was generally pleased with everyone we did interact with while in Japan.

Convenient and easy to use

Shinkansen is smooth and on time, get a seat ticket before boarding, JR ticket is separate