Certificate

Great pass option for ease of travel, only wish it came in the form of an RFID car instead of a paper ticket

The JR Rail Pass is an essential purchase if you wish to travel across Japan and experience the different regions and cities. Easy to use, it saves money over purchasing individual fares.

The JR Railcard was excellent for our trip to Japan. We traveled from Tokyo to Nikko then onwards to Nagano, Kanazawa, Kyoto, , Osaka, Hakone. We then returned to Tokyo
We choose the Green Car ticket for two weeks.
When we arrived at the different destinations we booked our onward ticket straight away. Staff were always helpful and there was no communication problem.
The trains were comfortable & always on time. Boarding was well organised. We had luggage & there was plenty of space to store the baggage.
The cards was invaluable for our trip.

It is a great stress free pass with a couple of niggles which are:-
A why do we have to queue up on arrival to activate it, after a 14 hour flight and the bureaucracy involved with getting through immigration it is a chore best to be avoided. Cannot it not be activated the first time you use it?
B why a card copy, in this day and age I would rather it was sent to my phone.
C there are issues when you want to transfer from JR line to a private line (or visa versa) you have to see a guard who manually has to let you through the barriers
In saying all that the positives outweigh the negatives and will probably use again on our next trip to Japan

Great experience with wonderful service

great service, would love to be Able to redeem card with a machine and not have to stand in line for that.

As a whole the JR rail pass is very convenient. However, as a regular tourist to Japan here are some things that could make it better:

1. Have a digital rail pass so it can't get lost of confused with seat reservation tickets (they are the same size/color/etc).
2. In Fukuoka at Hakata Station I had a hard time communicating with the agent because I didn't speak Japanese and he spoke very little English. He also didn't want to make eye contact and after standing in a long line I just to get the rail pass I wanted to find out if he could do the seat reservations for us. He just mumbled something and pointed to another long line.
3. As a qualifier, I didn't have this problem in Hokkaido. There the agent gave me my passes and I asked if I could make seat reservations and showed them my itinerary and they made the reservations for me.
4. I tried to use the app to make reservations but I couldn't remember my login and my password. So that didn't work well for me. I would suggest making the app more user friendly where you can login with google/apple etc.
5. My railpass wouldn't open the gate for me after the first use and the JR gate people said it was demagnetized. I asked if I could get a new card and they said no and just stamped my card and after that I had to show my pass to the people at the gate all the time. This was okay until we got off an express train and walked out the closest gate, which was the Shinkansen gate. The guy at the JR gate there wouldn't let me through because I didn't get off the Shinkansen--I had to backtrack through the gates until I found a regular JR gates. After doing that I couldn't find the rest of the group because they were waiting for me on a different level that I couldn't get to. That was very frustrating. I don't understand why I couldn't just pass through since I was coming off of a train and not going in.
This trip to Fukuoka was the only time I had so many issues with my JR pass. The other trips to Osaka and Hokkaido were great.

Excellent pass to travel around Japan.

This is the second time I purchased this JR pass when visiting Japan. The first time was in 2023 and I believe the price was just right. Now, in 2024, the price increased and I don't think it's worth it. The pass is much more expensive. I learned with the JR pass, some temples/buses allow you to go in for free or offer discounted prices which I didn't know. Overall, I will not get the JR pass next year. I will opt for a local - non-JR rail - pass for buses and other trains.

JR pass was excellent- will definitely be buying again for my next trip to Japan. Train system is fantastic.