I'll be travelling to Japan in few months for 7 days in Tokyo and 10 days in Kyoto. My itineraries are as follow:
Day 1: Arrive to Tokyo - Narita airport
Day 2-8 - Explore Tokyo (including 1 day to Nikko)
Day 9 - From Tokyo to Kyoto
Day 10-17 - Explore Kyoto (including side trip to Osaka/Hiroshima/Mount Koya)
Day 18 - Kyoto - Kansai Airport (KIX) in Osaka to Los Angeles
Please advise will it be more economical for me to buy 7 day JR Pass Ordinary or 14 day JR Pass.
Thanks so much for your help.
Regards.
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Comments
You'd get more value if you used a 7 day pass for Days 8-14 and traveled to Nikko, Kyoto, and Hiroshima/Miyajima within that period. If you used a 14 day pass for days 1-14 or 5-18, at best you'd barely make a 14 day pass pay off.
If you choose the 7 day pass, a cheap way into Tokyo is the 1000 yen bus.
http://accessnarita.jp/en/home/
Seven days is a lot of time for Tokyo - I'd say 3 or 4 are enough. In addition to Nikko, you might consider visiting Kamakura/Enoshima, Hakone, the Fuji 5 Lakes, or other nearby places. There are regional passes for all of them.
http://www.odakyu.jp/english/deels/
Also, you couldn't use the pass to go to Koyasan. For that, look into getting a Koyasan World Heritage Ticket.
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2358_012.html
Since you are already seeing Tokyo, you can largely skip Osaka during the day. After the temples of Kyoto close down around 5PM, you can zip over to Osaka for the evening. At night the city comes alive and has some great places to see, such as Dotonbori, plus the night views from the Umeda Sky Bldg and Abeno Harukas Bldg are wonderful.
On another evening, you could also go and see Kobe.
You should not skip Nara either - it has some of Japan's best sights.
You can see previews of some of the best places to see on:
https://www.youtube.com/user/thejapanfaq/videos