Hello,
I am traveling to Japan in August with my boyfriend
We will arrive the 14th August at haneda and will leave the 22nd from Osaka Kansai
we would like to do Tokyo - Kyoto - Nara - Osaka ( if you also have propositions of cities to see i am also opened to that)
I was a little bit confused with all the passes> Is it only with the shinkansen? ( which is the train i would like to take for the whole trip)
Which cheapest pass would you recommend for 2 ?
Many Thanks
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Comments
If you are only going one way as you write, a 7 day JR Pass would not pay off. You'd need to extend your trip with a few day trips (Nikko, Karuizawa, Izu or Kusatsu, etc). Or one day trip to see Hiroshima/Miyajima would do it.
Since you are already seeing Tokyo, you can largely skip Osaka during the day. After the temples of Kyoto close down around 5 PM, 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 can see previews of some of the best places to see in Japan on:
https://www.youtube.com/user/thejapanfaq/videos
JR Passes certainly do not limit you to the Shinkansen. However, if you're thinking that Shinkansen travel (besides limited express services) is what most JR Passes are intended for, you're certainly on the right track, no pun intended.
Tokyo-Kansai one-way wouldn't require you to make more than one Shinkansen trip. It's the most cookie-cutter plan, so there isn't any pass in particular to recommend for that.
But taking the Shinkansen is expensive. Since you're interested in doing it the cheapest way, I would be remiss if I didn't recommend looking into a Platt Kodama ticket. More info in the link.
http://www.jrtours.co.jp/kodama/en/