u/totalnewbie

People often have questions about the JR Pass. Usually, it's whether or not they need a JR Pass for a golden route trip. The answer is no.

But sometimes, people have more involved itineraries that allow the use of regional passes. And sometimes, there are several different options for the regional passes. They often cover different time periods and obviously different regions so it can quickly become confusing how to best take advantage of each pass and how to compare them to each other.

This year, I'm taking a very busy trip into Tohoku to visit a lot of different festivals. I lived in Japan before and have returned many times so I know what I'm signing up for. If you don't know what you're signing up for then I don't suggest you look at this as a sample itinerary.

However, what this itinerary does show well is the availability of various passes and over a fairly long timeframe (3 weeks).

So, here is how I do it:

https://i.imgur.com/13FJtMr.png

Some background information: my itinerary starts in Yuzawa and takes me back to Tokyo. Then, I plan to go to Nagaoka for some fireworks, returning to Tokyo that night. After that, I will go up to Tohoku to visit a bunch of festivals, finishing that tour in Sendai. After this, I've accomplished my main goals for this trip and the plan is fairly open. See last paragraph which also informed my decisions here but I decided I will go back to Akita to actually take a look around and then head to Hakodate to do the same before I have one more festival in Hirosaki and then I fly out the next day, departing from Hirosaki by train and heading more-or-less directly to the airport. My flight is at 6 PM so I feel comfortable making it back in time barring a major, major disruption and if that happens, well, that's the risk I chose to take.

First, there are a few pass options available (and just a note, the JR East pass just recently changed and this should reflect that change, though I made the sheet before the change so I might have overlooked something when I updated it, but it shouldn't affect the process).

• The JR East-South Hokkaido pass covers my entire itinerary. This pass is for 6 consecutive days.
• The JR East pass does not cover the section between Aomori and Hakodate. Technically, I can use it for part of the trip between Akita and Hakodate (and a small part back to Hirosaki) but I chose to just not calculate it at all unless it became really close. This pass comes in 5- and 10-day options. edit: to reinforce u/mbridson94's comment, while the "what this particular pass covers and doesn't cover" is pretty easy in my case, it can become quite a bit more complicated in some other areas so do be careful about that.
• The plain JR Pass which covers my entire trip, as to be expected. This comes in 7-, 14-, and 21-day options. Two of the 7-day passes are the same price as a 21-day pass so there's no reason to consider this option.

Then, I listed all my overnight locations to make sure I don't miss any major journeys (and I also use this sheet to track hotel reservations, etc...) and looked up the ticket price between each major destination on Jorudan. For days where I'm not doing major travel, I just make an estimate. Unless things come out very close, there's no big reason to fuss over these fine details.

I color in the cells according to the number of days the passes cover. This helps me make sure I don't make a mistake when I'm entering the formula.

Next comes the math: pass cost (don't forget the *2 if it's the case) - sum(highlighted cells) = savings. Sum(all cells) + savings = total cost. Or, if you want it in a single formula, pass - sum(highlighted cells) + sum(all cells) = total cost. Selecting cells will automatically sum them up so you can use this to do quick checks on moving the pass-days around if it looks close.

But finally, before I lock it in, I also used this way to visualize different options I had for where/when to travel. For example, I could have returned to Tokyo much earlier to take advantage of a 2x Tohoku East-South Hokkaido Pass though at the same price as a 14-day pass, it doesn't make too much sense. Or just a couple days earlier to make the 14-day JR pass a bit better and that would honestly be the best option by about 14000 JPY. But for an extra 14000 JPY, I can add another festival and have much more flexibility like the week I'm in Tokyo, when I could take an impromptu daytrip or overnight without concern (for travel cost). The total cost is about the same with a 21-day JR pass or the 10-day JR east pass but given the additional flexibility I get with the 21-day pass, it's clearly much better.

Hope I explained it well but happy to answer questions.