Hi,
I have a group of 7 that will be traveling to Japan for about 4.5 days starting on the 30th of June.
We are planing on using Osaka as our hub and will be making day trips from Osaka to Tokyo (by bullet train), Osaka to Kobe, and Osaka to Kyoto. Will the JR National Pass be worth it? We also looked at getting the JR Kansai Pass and buying the bullet train tickets to Tokyo separately. What would you all recommend? Thanks in advance for the responses!
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Comments
You'd barely break even on a 7 day pass, used to/from KIX and for your ideas. But a day trip to Tokyo is not worth it - it would be 6 hours of the day sitting on trains. If you are going to go to Tokyo, you should at least do an overnight. Otherwise, it'd be better to just skip Tokyo and leave it for a future trip. Overall, with only 4½ days, it would be best to spend your days in Kyoto and Nara, and you could also go see Osaka and Kobe in the evening.
Getting a Kansai Area Pass would not pay off - it's actually rather difficult to make one pay off without some long distance travel, like a day trip to Himeji (which is very worthwhile).
You can see previews of some of the best places to see on:
https://www.youtube.com/user/thejapanfaq/videos
Hope that helps.