00:00:02 John Daub: All right, we are back. Thank you. Welcome to Tokyo. I'm joined now with co-founder of TokyoCheapo, my friend Greg Lane.

00:00:11 Greg Lane: Hello.

00:00:11 John Daub: And we'll be discussing with you what the heck happened. Why Japan Rail raised the prices by over 60% on the Japan Rail passes. What this means for you, what are your options, and how do we get around this. And other stuff about travel in Japan. We'll be taking some call-ins from people on our Discord server. The link will be in the live stream right there. And I'm super excited to talk about this because I was shocked yesterday when I saw the news and I went out and streamed right away. This is something that just happens. Greg, what exactly did happen? Why is this? Because JR has six major divisions. JR Hokkaido, JR East, JR Central, JR West, JR Kyushu, JR Shikoku.

00:00:59 Greg Lane: Correct. Yeah.

00:01:00 John Daub: And one of them was, I think, a problem.

00:01:02 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah. The JR company that's in charge of the rail pass is JR Central. So JR Central — they only have one Shinkansen line, and that's the line from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka. So the busiest one.

00:01:19 John Daub: Right?

00:01:19 Greg Lane: You know, the one that most people take. So I think part of it is just the success of the past. It's kind of a victim of its own success. So many people are using it. It's such a good deal that it was possibly causing capacity issues on that line.

00:01:36 John Daub: Oh, definitely.

00:01:37 Greg Lane: And one kind of interesting thing is they recently announced that that line between Shin-Osaka and Tokyo is now up to pre-COVID levels in terms of the traffic.

00:01:47 John Daub: So it was very crowded when I rode it recently. There's a lot of people with luggage too. So it's become really congested. So the story is that the bottleneck was JR Central, right?

00:01:59 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah.

00:02:00 John Daub: Bottleneck is not the right word. But the issue was JR Central.

00:02:03 Greg Lane: Yeah. I still think it's a cash grab. But you know, without wanting to slander JR Central, I think they're probably to blame, most likely.

00:02:13 John Daub: So the first question a lot of people are asking me is: will they raise the price of the regional passes? I'm saying no, based simply because this is an issue I think with the Golden Route. This is almost a direct reaction to the fact that most tourists don't travel up to Tohoku or go to Kyushu or Shikoku. They're basically using JR Central services to go down to Osaka and Kyoto. There's nothing wrong with that, except that this has created a problem. But with that ¥50,000 for seven days, you get to ride the Nozomi Shinkansen, which means there are more trains open to the people.

00:02:51 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's more services because — like there's more Nozomi services than I think Kodama and Hikari put together. So it's a little bit more convenient. But I don't think it's ¥20,000 more convenient.

00:03:03 John Daub: More convenient to ¥20,000 — yeah, 60-something percent. I'm gonna put up the list. Here are the price hikes. Here's what the price hikes look like. This is for the Japan Rail passes. There are 7, 14, 21 day passes. The seven day pass, probably the one that people buy the most — but I think it's the 14 day pass that offers the best value because you do get a little bit of a discount. Now it goes from ¥29,650 to ¥50,000 after sometime in October. This announcement came. So they haven't really put in the details, have they?

00:03:40 Greg Lane: There's no date, so it says — the official press release says "about October." So I think that means it won't be September or November, but it'll be sometime in October. It could be the first or it could be a Monday in October or something like that.

00:03:56 John Daub: We're not sure yet. These are the Green Car passes, and you can see that's significant. 21 day pass is ¥140,000. But I think if you have the ability to buy a Green Car pass, you probably don't mind paying this price too much. But it looks like — it almost looks like it's double the price or, as you said, about 60-some percent.

00:04:15 Greg Lane: I mean, it suffers from the same problem as the general pass. It's like — if you're going to Kyoto and you want to take the Green Car, it's still cheaper to buy tickets than get the Green Car JR Pass. Now, I mean, I'm talking about from October. At the moment it's a fantastic deal, but after October it's not so good.

00:04:34 John Daub: The biggest question that people have been asking me — I'll get right to the point here. If you buy this ticket on September 30, 2023, is that price locked in?

00:04:44 Greg Lane: There is information about that, but the way it's been in the past is you have a three-month period to exchange your voucher. So if you purchase from a third party—

00:04:53 John Daub: If you purchase directly from JR, I've been told there's a 30-day or one month. Read the fine print.

00:05:02 Greg Lane: There's been no announcement about that. So it's all up in the air. There might even be — perhaps. I don't want to speculate. I'm speculating.

00:05:11 John Daub: This is all speculation because they haven't really announced a lot of details.

00:05:15 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, they might even say if you travel after October 1st, you have to pay a surcharge. Hopefully they don't do that. But like if you bought your pass before—

00:05:25 John Daub: By the way, we're talking mostly JR Central.

00:05:28 Greg Lane: Well, they control the pass.

00:05:29 John Daub: So they control the pass. I think the biggest misconception that people have — and we're going to be going back and forth and taking some of your questions again. If you want to join our Discord server, we're going to take some call-ins from viewers that are watching as well. As I see the live chat going by here, a lot of people are upset about this, and if you look at the comments of yesterday's video, there are a lot of people upset about it. I felt like I was almost defending JR and then I caught myself — I'm like, what am I doing? I don't have to defend JR. But I still think that the price is a good deal. You might differ.

00:06:03 Greg Lane: I don't think so.

00:06:03 John Daub: But I think if you compare this to the regional passes, you could see it's not a good deal. And I think maybe that's part of the issue. I would rather see a decrease of people riding it casually on that Golden Route. For me, as somebody who lives here, because there's a lot of business travel on that route too, so the higher prices might lower it, which is probably not a bad thing. But we have regional passes which nobody seems to know about because everybody's upset about this one particular pass which encompasses the whole country. The regional passes have been ignored for a very long time.

00:06:37 Greg Lane: Yeah. I think the JR Pass — what it does is it gives you that flexibility to just go anywhere. Whereas with the regional passes, you have to decide on an area first. I'm going to go to this area and I'm going to travel around. You have to decide on your itinerary a bit more and it's a bit more limited. But some of them — I mean, there's actually a straight-drop alternative to the JR Pass if you're interested in going from Tokyo to Osaka or Tokyo to Kyoto, which is the Hokuriku Arch Pass. So instead of going direct down the east coast of Japan, what it does is, as the name suggests, it arches over the top. So it goes to the west coast, to Kanazawa, and then it goes down — you can take a regular express train called the Thunderbird from Kanazawa to Osaka. And you get to visit Kanazawa as well, which is a really interesting city. And it's cheaper than the JR Pass.

00:07:34 John Daub: Which is — I think the regionality of it. The JRs from each division can set up those prices. What you see scrolling is the JR East website that lists all of the passes. I'm pretty sure it's just the JR East stuff, but most travelers coming in are coming in through Narita or Haneda. I always thought that was a mistake. I always thought that Kansai Airport was better because there are more attractions in the Kansai region than in Tokyo per se. I mean, but that's my own opinion. But if you're coming in through JR East, you have a bunch of passes you see scrolling here. A lot of them are really cheap and probably better. And the majority of you don't even know that you could be saving a lot of money just by doing regions at a time. Taking an airplane, flying to Koch Prefecture and then jumping on the train there for a regional Shikoku pass will save you a ton of money. And then you have a discounted Shinkansen pass that I didn't even know about. This is why Greg is such an important person to have on the show today, because he knows — he's the one who wrote the article for TokyoCheapo. Here, let me bring up this. Just look at TokyoCheapo.com's website here. Greg wrote that article that you see on the front of the page here. What are some of the other passes that people should be considering that come to Japan?

00:08:51 Greg Lane: Another one — you mentioned the JR East passes. There's actually about five different JR East passes. So this is part of the problem with the JR Pass versus the regional passes. There was one JR Pass and there's something like 20, 25 kind of regional passes. So that's where the confusion comes in. So you have to decide on your itinerary first and then choose your pass that suits it. So JR East has some very good ones. There's one for about ¥27,000, and it goes for six days, I think. And it basically covers all of the northern half of Japan, all through into Hokkaido. So it's similar to JR Pass, but you obviously don't get the Kyoto and West Japan part.

00:09:36 John Daub: Or is it the JR East and Hokkaido, the Hokkaido one that goes up to Hakodate?

00:09:40 Greg Lane: There are two passes that include Hokkaido.

00:09:42 John Daub: So it's confusing a little bit.

00:09:43 Greg Lane: Yeah, it is a bit confusing. There's also — there's one for JR West which basically starts in Kansai and it covers Kyushu as well. So you can do Kyoto, you can do Nara, you can do Hiroshima. You can make quite a good itinerary out of that. And that's a similar price — it's around ¥26,000, I think, for seven days.

00:10:09 John Daub: A lot less than the ¥50,000 for the—

00:10:12 Greg Lane: I mean, you could get two different regional passes and you know, that'd still be cheaper than the JR Pass. You have to get between those two places — maybe you could fly or take the bus or something.

00:10:22 John Daub: And that's another issue here. There's more than one way to get around Japan than just by train. You can — they have night buses that go from Tokyo to Osaka for as low as ¥3,500. At least that was the price that I saw. Will you be comfortable? No. But have you ever taken that bus?

00:10:40 Greg Lane: I haven't taken that.

00:10:41 John Daub: Are you serious? I've done it a couple of times years ago. I never got any sleep though.

00:10:46 Greg Lane: I've taken a similar bus to Aomori, which is a similar distance. Oh, it's probably more, actually, and that was hell. But there are really fancy buses that go down to Osaka as well. Like there's ones with — you basically have a little cabin inside the bus.

00:10:58 John Daub: Oh, I've seen those.

00:10:58 Greg Lane: Yeah. And they're about ¥10,000.

00:11:00 John Daub: Are those the Willer ones?

00:11:01 Greg Lane: It's one of the companies. It's a few different companies. Willer's one. Yeah. And they have some that have — they have all different types. They have one that's like — you have one either side of the aisle. There's another one that's like one and then two. And if you want the cheap ones, then it's two and two. So they have these kind of business-class style seats.

00:11:18 John Daub: Those are crazy. But again, that will inflate the price of your trip. And we're going to look at some ways that will save you some money. Again, for those joining us, this is Greg Lane, co-founder of TokyoCheapo.com. There's a link in the description if you want to check out the site. They also have a calculator that will help you determine if the JR Rail Pass is the right way for you.

00:11:39 Greg Lane: That's based on the current price. So it's based on the current rating.

00:11:42 John Daub: But the current price — here, I want to turn over to our Discord server here. Please raise your hand if you have a question. We'll bring you up. Up to the — I guess we could start off here. So we have our moderators. Hello. Hi. 821 and UFO Bob in the house. Who are we going to bring up here today?

00:11:59 Greg Lane: I'm going to put up — Nine Merlin Engines. Yep. First. Hello.

00:12:04 John Daub: Hello. What's your question?

00:12:07 Greg Lane: Hello? Can you hear me okay?

00:12:08 Nine Merlin Engines: Yep, yep. Mine's not really more of a question, it's more of a comment. But in my opinion, I think the seven day is still worth it if you do two round trips to Tokyo to Osaka. That's just my opinion.

00:12:28 John Daub: Why would you do two round trips to Osaka on one holiday?

00:12:34 Nine Merlin Engines: Well, frankly, because I don't want to book a hotel in Osaka. So I'll spend a day in Osaka then go back to Tokyo to sleep there. If that makes sense.

00:12:39 John Daub: Yeah, that does make sense. See, I think because we live here, we're like — why would you waste all that time on the train? Because the flight over to Japan is quite pricey, right? And you want to maximize the time that you have by not sitting on the train. But so many people just love to sit on the train in Japan because that in itself is one of the attractions of the country — experiences.

00:13:00 Greg Lane: Yeah, it's right. You know, it's nice.

00:13:04 John Daub: It is really fun. Any follow-up on that, Nine Merlin Engines?

00:13:10 Greg Lane: No, not really. But actually, to your point about whether it's worth it with multiple trips and stuff, you can make it work. Like, for example, you could do Tokyo to Osaka return and then you could go up to — I think you have to go beyond Sendai because even going to Sendai, it's still cheaper to get regular tickets. Maybe up to Aomori or something and then back. But the problem I have with that is that it's — the seven day, at least you have to spend five of those days on the train basically to make it worth it. So if you like just racing around the place and not really stopping to look at the scenery — you're racing five of those days.

00:13:54 John Daub: All right, thank you for the question. We got a couple other people who have their hands raised here. Who's next person up? Will be Piro Supra. Piro Supra, how can we help you today?

00:14:13 Greg Lane: Hello?

00:14:13 Piro Supra: Hi, my name is Andrew Boyd and I was just wondering if anybody wanted to be reimbursed for riding the trains. My business is tied into Toyota and we are part of the family that started the train system in Japan.

00:14:23 Greg Lane: So just wanted to know if anybody—

00:14:26 Piro Supra: Wanted to be reimbursed for buying tickets.

00:14:29 John Daub: Okay. It's kind of confusing.

00:14:36 Greg Lane: No, it wasn't too confusing.

00:14:37 John Daub: All right. Thank you so much for that. Toyota didn't start the rail system in Japan in the 1960s. There's more — Toshiba and — ah, this is like Hitachi and also Hitachi is one of them.

00:14:50 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:14:50 John Daub: But I appreciate calling in. We got some questions on Patreon as well. Let me bring this up right here. This comes from — do I have pesos here? Thought I took a screenshot of it. So basically, a lot of people have been asking about whether the pass is still worth it if the price is hiked up. And for me, I keep on going back to this one simple thing: people have been using the JR Rail Pass all wrong. If that even makes any sense. Like, I think you get the JR Rail Pass because you think that might be the only pass. But those — unless you're making really long trips. Like my example to people was: "Oh, it's just so expensive." I said, "Do you understand how much it would cost to go from Tokyo to Sapporo and back? It's ¥45,520. It's basically the price of a seven day trip." And the people who buy the passes are typically the people who love to ride the trains. And you'll take day trips to Osaka from Tokyo. You'll take a day trip to Aomori from Tokyo, which is crazy to us who live here. But those are the type of people that would buy this pass because it then pays off for itself, right? So are people doing it wrong, Greg?

00:16:13 Greg Lane: I don't know. I'm not a fan. My rule for day trips is anything that takes longer than two hours travel is not a day trip. It's like you should stay there overnight. So two hours — I mean, you can do, for example, you could do a day trip to Kyoto, but it's really worth spending more time there. I don't know. It's my style. I like to — another reason, I don't really like the pass. I mean, not that I can use it because I'm a resident anyway, but—

00:16:44 John Daub: We neither of us can use this pass. Sorry. It's a little bit chilly.

00:16:47 Greg Lane: Yeah. Starting freezing, but okay. The thing is, I think what most people use it for is actually just going to Kyoto at the moment. So it kind of makes sense at the moment because the price to get to Kyoto is between ¥26,000 and ¥28,000 just for the Shinkansen. So you do another trip and you've paid for the pass, whereas if that's what you're worried about, then you just buy the tickets. It's not going to be any more expensive after the change, you know.

00:17:15 John Daub: So you said there was another ticket for the Kodama for—

00:17:18 Greg Lane: There is, there's a — okay. There are three services on the Tokaido Shinkansen that runs from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka. The fastest one is the Nozomi. The next fastest one is the Hikari — so basically they have more stops. And the one that — the slow train that basically stops at every single station is the Kodama. And the Kodama takes three hours, 40 minutes, I think.

00:17:43 John Daub: And—

00:17:43 Greg Lane: Yeah. And there's a special ticket called the Puratto Kodama which you can get for ¥10,000.

00:17:48 John Daub: The Puratto Kodama. Is it for domestic—

00:17:51 Greg Lane: It's basically for domestic consumption, but anybody can use it anyway.

00:17:54 John Daub: Anyone can use it.

00:17:55 Greg Lane: Anyone can use it. It's a bit weird. They had an English site for it, but it disappeared and there's only a Japanese site for it. But it's not restricted to tourists or locals or anything. Anyone can buy it, but you have to navigate the Japanese site at the moment.

00:18:06 John Daub: Oh, thank you. So yeah, that's ¥10,000 yen one way — ¥10,000 to ¥12,000 to get to Kyoto, ¥24,000 return. So that's — you know, ¥5,000 yen cheaper than the current JR Pass. So if you're just doing Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, don't get the new pass.

00:18:29 John Daub: Right. The point is that you do have options. Some of them aren't even listed on the JR website. You have — I have a second long — I have a long sleeve shirt. So when the sun went away just about 10 minutes ago, the weather really went down. There's another pass called the Seishun Jihachi Kippu, which is not even promoted on the JR English websites.

00:18:52 Greg Lane: For good reason.

00:18:53 John Daub: For good reason, perhaps. That pass is about ¥12,500 yen. Is it? It used to be ¥10,500.

00:19:01 Greg Lane: That's quite cheap.

00:19:02 John Daub: It's quite cheap. It works out to like ¥2,500 a day or like $20. And you can go as far as you can possibly go anywhere in Japan on JR trains, just — it's limited to the local lines or Shinkansen. But I have to tell you this: I've learned so much about Japan taking local trains because it slows everything down. You go through every single station and every station I go to, I learned the kanji.

00:19:24 Greg Lane: Right.

00:19:24 John Daub: And how to say it. So I've been able to do kanji study by learning the locations going around there. Which is pretty crazy, right?

00:19:31 Greg Lane: And every station has a unique chime as well, right?

00:19:35 John Daub: I think so. Some of the lines might have it outside of Tokyo. I know they do have different chimes. But you learn a lot about the culture too. The signs even change when you enter a new JR area — the style of it. So there's a lot of culture in the local trains, which I think people miss. The Shinkansen goes too darn fast. Slow it down sometimes. Take those local trains. The local Tokaido Line will go down to Nagoya. I think it takes five hours.

00:19:58 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:19:59 John Daub: And on the Shinkansen it'll take you 90 minutes. So—

00:20:02 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah.

00:20:03 John Daub: It just depends if you have the time.

00:20:05 Greg Lane: Yeah. You've got to be a bit adventurous to do that. I think you could go to Tokyo to Kyoto and take nine different trains or something.

00:20:14 John Daub: I think so. Yeah. It's fun. And there are apps for everything now. But I still like that book. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's ¥500 at the bookstores. It has a map of all of the train lines. You find out where you are. There's a little teeny number and that number is the page number on the map. You go to that page number and then you can see the departure times from the first train to the last train. And I love taking that book with me on the local train and just dreaming of all the places and stops that I can go to. It also helps me realize where I am.

00:20:42 Greg Lane: I've never used that one.

00:20:43 John Daub: Are you serious?

00:20:44 Greg Lane: This is like pre-Internet or something, isn't it?

00:20:45 John Daub: Well, I've been here since '98. This is — we didn't have smartphones in 1998, 2003 and 4. You basically had that. And they still sell it because Japan is an analog place or newspapers are still king. And I like to have those books and then dream about all the places — just like when I got with the Lonely Planet before my trip, I would go comb over those guidebooks and look at it. Now everything is online, so you kind of miss that feeling of it. So I think people plan as well as a result.

00:21:13 Greg Lane: Yeah. They still have it at the JR booking office. It's about that thick or something, right?

00:21:16 John Daub: Whoa.

00:21:17 Greg Lane: No, you're talking about a little book.

00:21:19 John Daub: There's one, I think — it's not made by JR. It's in all the bookstores. You can get it at Taya in Roppongi or over there in Shibuya. I think it was ¥500, one coin. But the book was — yeah, about this thick. It had all the JR and the private lines on there, so it was kind of neat. I have a question about the private lines: will the JR Rail Pass ever include those private lines?

00:21:45 Greg Lane: Never. Never? Never.

00:21:46 John Daub: That's not gonna happen. Why? Well, people always want to know why the rail in Japan is just so complicated. It's like — there's the six JR companies. Actually, there's more — more than six JR companies because there's also JR Freight and JR Logistics.

00:22:04 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:22:05 John Daub: But there are something like 100 different private railway companies.

00:22:11 Greg Lane: There's a lot.

00:22:12 John Daub: And they mainly cooperate. They often have like joint ticketing. So you can use like Pasmo or Suica or something, but the system is never gonna join up. And that was — I mean, that was a good thing about the JR Pass: you could just take it and at least if you're on a JR, if it's got JR in front of it, you can use it.

00:22:34 Greg Lane: Right. Including the ferries.

00:22:36 John Daub: Right, right. Including the ferry to Miyajima was on all of the passes and some JR buses as well.

00:22:40 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:22:40 John Daub: I think right now this JR Rail Pass hike is gonna take effect in October. The details are sketchy, but we do know something: they're going to be adding incentives to that pass. Have they announced any of the incentives so far?

00:22:54 Greg Lane: No.

00:22:57 John Daub: None of them.

00:22:58 Greg Lane: No, there's — you know, they released the information on a Friday, right before the weekend. Release the bad news on a Friday so no one notices, hopefully.

00:23:08 John Daub: Yeah, no, that's not going to happen.

00:23:09 Greg Lane: Yeah. So I don't know what they're gonna add. I mean, there's a few kind of new interesting things opening up. Like there's the Ghibli Park that's opened recently in Nagoya, which is on the Tokaido Shinkansen. Actually, it's not really on the Tokaido Shinkansen. It's about a 50-minute train journey from Nagoya station. And apart from that, there is the new Warner Bros. — kind of Harry Potter thing in Tokyo. But if you're in Tokyo, you don't need to take the train for that.

00:23:37 John Daub: But it'd be nice if they added some discounts to that inside of the pass, like maybe something that they could possibly do. We're just not quite sure yet. This is still early in it, but do you think because the feedback has been quite overwhelmingly negative, they might alter the price?

00:23:52 Greg Lane: It's possible. Because I mean, it did say on the news release, it did say they reserve the right to change the price before October, which could go either way.

00:24:01 John Daub: Yeah. So they could be looking at the — I mean, there's been other speculation too, about exchange rates, which I don't really buy into. Like the idea that the US dollar to yen exchange rate — the US dollar is really high at the moment, so they're trying to cash in. I'm not — I don't buy into that because that's only a small percentage of the people who are actually catching the — taking the pass. You know, it's like there's people from all over the world buying it. So it's not just the US, right? And that'll change — maybe in a year it'll flip. You know, we've been here for a long time. The US dollar has been anywhere from like 80 yen up to like 140 or something.

00:24:44 John Daub: Right. So I got here when it was 147 and '98. So I've seen the entire fluctuation. It's crazy right now.

00:24:50 Greg Lane: It's not —

00:24:50 John Daub: It's pretty good for tourists coming in, but not so good for the Aussie dollar, then the Kiwi dollar.

00:24:57 Greg Lane: It's relatively high, but it's not anything like the US, I guess, in that sense. For American travelers, the deal is not so bad comparatively to Australian travelers.

00:25:08 John Daub: Okay, it's not so bad in US dollar terms. But the thing is, it's still bad value because you can buy the tickets with your US dollars as well and save lots of money.

00:25:20 John Daub: So you would not recommend this pass as it is.

00:25:24 Greg Lane: Unless you're a train fanatic. No. Yeah, unless you're taking two round trips to Tokyo-Osaka during your trip, or three or something.

00:25:33 John Daub: Yeah, see, this is where I differ with Greg. I can see the value depending on how much you actually do travel. I think people were getting — they were getting for the original pass here, let me put it up for those that are joining us here. People would buy that pass before the price change for about ¥30,000 and they would extract like ¥200,000 out of it. Just basically live on the Shinkansen.

00:25:58 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:25:58 John Daub: I like it because I would — if I had this pass, I would just go on the Shinkansen just to get some work done. Plug the Shinkansen, plug my computer in on the front there and just ride for four hours. Because I could focus so well when I'm riding for some reason. Eat a bento. It's kind of almost an experience — like a rolling office in a way, right?

00:26:15 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah.

00:26:16 John Daub: So in that way I could see for those people, it really does pay for itself, doesn't it?

00:26:21 Greg Lane: Yeah. I mean, you could get on it and — I mean, if you're really one of the — the challenge, you could get on it in Kyushu and ride it all the way up to Hokkaido. I don't know how long that would be. Like that would be — actually, I'm not sure if you could do that in a day. It might—

00:26:35 John Daub: You can.

00:26:35 Greg Lane: You can. Okay.

00:26:36 John Daub: If you leave at 5:40 on the first train from Kagoshima-Chuo Station, you can get to Hakodate by—

00:26:45 Greg Lane: Yeah, that's more of an endurance thing. I don't know if it's much of a fun trip.

00:26:49 John Daub: Eh? Writes in here. Hey guys, was just in Japan. Thank you for the Super Chat. March 8th to 28th, JR Rail Pass came in handy. Staying in Osaka, Kochi, Tokyo. So many awesome day trips. Any advice on travel to Hokkaido with a regional pass?

00:27:06 Greg Lane: Right, Hokkaido does have a regional pass. They do. It's part of the — at the moment it's part of the JR East passes. So yeah, if you're just interested in Hokkaido, they did have specific passes for Hokkaido last year, but they don't have them anymore. They might be coming back.

00:27:23 John Daub: I'm jumping on the JR Hokkaido—

00:27:25 Greg Lane: Maybe it's back. Is it?

00:27:26 John Daub: Yeah. So I'm jumping on the JR area pass.

00:27:30 John Daub: Yeah. So here's — here's my laptop here. You can see they have a Sapporo-Noboribetsu pass. This is a four day, non-reserved seats only. What's the price on it? That's pretty good. If you buy it outside of Japan, it's cheaper — ¥8,000. That's a pretty kind of luxury train that they run. So it's a pretty comfortable ride.

00:27:49 Greg Lane: Wide windows and things.

00:27:50 John Daub: Yeah. So you can see that they do have certain passes that are just for Hokkaido — Sapporo, Furano Area Pass, the ones that involve the Shinkansen. I want you to keep in mind that Shinkansen only runs up to — right, here's the Hokkaido Rail Pass. It's five days and seven days they have here.

00:28:13 Greg Lane: Actually, that's an interesting point. They're building the Shinkansen to Sapporo, but it's not going to open for about five years, I think.

00:28:20 John Daub: Yeah, it's going to be a while.

00:28:21 Greg Lane: And there's actually — there's an extension happening on the Hokuriku Shinkansen, the one that goes to Kanazawa currently, which will extend to Fukui in April next year, so. And that will be covered by the Hokuriku Arch Pass. Yeah. But I don't know — I haven't done much rail travel in Sapporo and around Hokkaido. Have you?

00:28:50 John Daub: Since I got a driver's license, I haven't done much at all. Just basically on the Hanasaki Line, which is an episode coming I'm editing right now. But the problem with Hokkaido is that the schedule is kind of slow. There aren't as many trains up there. JR Hokkaido isn't doing so great. So they're actually closing down stations, especially in east Hokkaido, and closing down certain lines. The Hanasaki Line is endangered. That would be one of the lines that they cut. They've already cut a few lines up there, which is heartbreaking. So I hope that doesn't happen. Another reason to use the trains so that they don't cut them.

00:29:38 John Daub: I think there's great hope that tourists will use the trains in regional areas. The problem is that you guys aren't going to those regional areas. Most of you will come to Japan — I'm not saying all of you, but what is it like 85, 90% of tourists that come to Japan fly into Tokyo or Osaka and stay on the Golden Route, which is between Hiroshima and Tokyo, and don't deviate very much. And only a trickle will go to other areas. And it's YouTubers and creators like us that are really opening up the doors because you don't even know what's out there. Tokyo Cheapo and you have Japan Cheapo as well — that's opening up some doors in the regional areas.

00:30:20 Greg Lane: It's terrible for the environment. I mean, catching the train is the most eco-friendly thing you can do. But I've kind of really liked driving recently — just going into the countryside and it's convenient.

00:30:28 John Daub: But again, the trains are so inconvenient in some areas. Driving is the only way to get to some — Okinawa, right?

00:30:35 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:30:36 John Daub: And if you have a family, it almost pays for itself. A lot of people said, well, I'm gonna rent — get a rental car instead of getting the train pass. That's probably not a bad idea. Outside of the city areas and the east side of Japan, it's pretty easy to drive around.

00:30:49 Greg Lane: Yeah. Not if you're by yourself though. Like if you want to get a rental car and go down to Kyoto, the rental car — sorry, not even the rental car charges — just the toll charges and the gas will cost you about ¥30,000.

00:31:08 John Daub: So it is pricier than the train in many ways. And it's the toll that kind of is the culprit of it. The hybrids — a rental from Tokyo Toyota Rent A Cars, the Prius which is standard is about ¥9,500 for the day with insurance. Gas is pretty cheap because it is a hybrid. But the tolls catch you. So you're running about like ¥16,000 a day.

00:31:38 Greg Lane: Yeah. And don't take a wrong turn, otherwise you've got to go off the highway.

00:31:43 John Daub: I've done that.

00:31:44 Greg Lane: That is an extra charge.

00:31:47 John Daub: That has happened quite a bit. But I think — you know, I think though, like when you look at this is a video that my friend Peter and I did, just so much romanticism with the train, especially the Tohoku Shinkansen. This is the one that a lot of you aren't riding. It's the green and the red one. This one goes up to Aomori and eventually to Hokkaido. Eating an ekiben and having that experience. I think everybody in Japan needs to do something like that, right?

00:32:11 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to do it, you can do a — you can do a trip to Omiya if you want for like ¥3,000 or something like that's the budget Shinkansen experience.

00:32:21 John Daub: Just ride the Shinkansen for that, right?

00:32:22 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:32:23 John Daub: So you wouldn't recommend like going — this is going through Ichinoseki station at top speed there. So you wouldn't recommend like going Tokyo to Shinagawa or something.

00:32:34 Greg Lane: You could.

00:32:35 John Daub: You have to eat real fast.

00:32:36 Greg Lane: Yeah, but I mean, Shin-Yokohama is probably about the closest place you could go without getting a kind of a Shinkansen experience. But I think if you're — the big thing everyone wants is to take the Shinkansen down to Kyoto and look out the right side of the train and see Mount Fuji. And right — you know, it's—

00:32:56 John Daub: By the way, it's on the right side.

00:32:58 Greg Lane: Yeah. We're going to Kyoto.

00:33:02 John Daub: Right. There's an arrow on the sign that will tell you which direction the train is coming. It's the opposite direction that the train pulls into the station quite often. Is that the origin? I believe so, yeah. You want to sit usually in the two-seater one, right?

00:33:18 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah. So it's always full configuration — is three on the left and two on the right.

00:33:30 John Daub: So have you noticed that those two-seaters always — the seats are more depressed than the three-seaters because everyone is sitting there and sometimes that side of the train is always packed and the other side with the three-seaters is not. Unless people don't want this — because also the sun is coming in through that side.

00:33:47 Greg Lane: I did not know that.

00:33:48 John Daub: I've noticed that the — I ride the Shinkansen quite a bit. The butt depressions.

00:33:53 Greg Lane: That would make sense though, because on the way back from Kyoto to Tokyo, the side with three seats is the one where you can see the Mount Fuji, right.

00:34:01 John Daub: I think maybe it is. It just has to do — in the morning it's on the right side. At night it — you want to come back on the left side, but because the sun isn't streaming in—

00:34:09 Greg Lane: Okay.

00:34:09 John Daub: It's more mixed. And I think that those two-seaters — if you're by yourself, you sit in that because you're hoping that no one will sit next to you.

00:34:17 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:34:18 John Daub: Right. So there's more butts on the—

00:34:21 Greg Lane: Well, if you don't want someone to sit next to you, you'd better be on the three-seat side because—

00:34:25 John Daub: You sit in the middle.

00:34:26 Greg Lane: No, no. Oh, you could do that.

00:34:28 John Daub: Don't do that. That's the one thing — that's the pet peeve in Japan. It's so crowded, you cannot put your bags on a seat and then try to save it like that. It's considered extremely rude because people are actually standing in between the cars. In some situations, you want to put your bags in the overhead luggage. You can do that in the — and try to be, you know, kind of a jerk about it.

00:34:57 Greg Lane: In Japan, there's all sorts of new rules about luggage as well.

00:35:01 John Daub: I'm sure you've covered oversized luggage.

00:35:03 Greg Lane: Yeah. And JR Central is also to blame for those. So there's a theme.

00:35:11 John Daub: There is a theme. But I don't think — for business travelers, that route is so popular as well, it's just a little bit irritating if there's a lot of tourists on the Nozomi now. I have to be honest.

00:35:22 Greg Lane: What a buzzkill, man.

00:35:23 John Daub: Are you happy about tourists now riding the Nozomi?

00:35:26 Greg Lane: I'm fine with it. Like, you know, it's — I don't look down on tourists.

00:35:31 John Daub: I don't look down at it, but it's just — gonna get more crowded. I don't know. Like I did — I did, you know, having a little bit of freedom riding the Nozomi. But I think it's a really good thing if you do want to upgrade and buy this JR Rail Pass, you do have the option to ride the Nozomi. If not, you have the regional passes, so.

00:35:51 Greg Lane: Well, it's going to be so expensive that no one's going to buy it and no one will be riding the Nozomi anyway.

00:35:55 John Daub: I disagree. I think people are. Yesterday I did a live stream and we talked about this. Here's a little video. Hold on a second. That's not it. And I met a couple of people from Australia and I asked them straight up: I said, hey, first — how did you get in to catch me here? And they took their JR Rail Pass to enter in to come and find me.

00:36:19 Greg Lane: Oh, wow.

00:36:19 John Daub: And I asked them point blank. I said, if you had — this is the video from yesterday. Guys, if you had the price hike right now, would you still get the tickets? "Yeah" was the answer. Even with a family, it's really painful. It's a tough thing to swallow, but you would still get it. But I think now, I'm hoping by watching this live stream, you have a better understanding that you do have options. This isn't the only pass. Glad, guys — this isn't what you should be getting angry about. Just screw the JR Rail Pass, look at the other JR options, and you'll find that you'll probably save money even more so than the pass that you were buying at that original rate.

00:37:02 Greg Lane: And yeah, private lines and stuff. You know, there's so many places you can go without taking a Shinkansen, like Nikko, for example. You can just catch the Tobu Line.

00:37:11 John Daub: Oh, the Tobu Line from Asakusa to Nikko is like — was it still used to be like ¥10,000 or ¥1,000?

00:37:19 Greg Lane: Yeah. Super cheap.

00:37:20 John Daub: It's — it's — all the way to Tokyo Nikko for like $7 or something like that?

00:37:25 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:37:26 John Daub: And — or you can take the Shinkansen for ¥5,000. So there are other options to consider, and I think that's something that a lot of you should do your homework before you come here.

00:37:34 Greg Lane: Yeah. And there's more trains than just the Shinkansen. It's like — I think the Shinkansen is kind of like the train nerds' intro to trains in Japan. Oh—

00:37:46 John Daub: Andre from Australia and his family. Yeah, right there.

00:37:49 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:37:49 John Daub: Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

00:37:50 Greg Lane: Like, there's these — I'm sure you've seen tons of them, right — there's these special trains that run on these regional lines. Like, they'll have this kind of gimmick. Like, there'll be ones that have like a foot onsen in the train. There'll be other ones where they have like an art gallery in the train. Or there'll be like some theme where it's like some Doraemon train.

00:38:08 John Daub: Or, you know, they find ways to get you intrigued. The Pokemon with U train is one that I love — from Ichinoseki to Kesennuma. Yeah, that came about.

00:38:16 Greg Lane: Have you taken the Hello Kitty train?

00:38:19 John Daub: I have. I boarded it at Osaka Station, but I didn't want to ride it because I thought, I'll take a regular train. I don't know.

00:38:27 Greg Lane: I took it by accident.

00:38:28 John Daub: Oh, you did?

00:38:28 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:38:29 John Daub: How cool is that? Was it a fun experience?

00:38:32 Greg Lane: I was kind of shocked. I wasn't expecting to catch it. And I kind of read about it, and it kind of — this pink train pulled into the station.

00:38:40 John Daub: They still have it, by the way.

00:38:41 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah. And I was wondering if I could ride this thing. But it's just a regular train. It only runs like twice a day in each direction.

00:38:48 John Daub: The Sakura from Shin-Osaka to Hakata, right?

00:38:51 Greg Lane: Yeah. It's the slow train too.

00:38:56 John Daub: It's worth it though. I think they have Hello Kitty bentos and stuff on there too, right?

00:38:59 Greg Lane: Yeah. There's all sorts of merch, like exclusive merch you can only buy on the train.

00:39:04 John Daub: Is there a pass for that? Just JR West Pass?

00:39:06 Greg Lane: That's covered by the JR West Pass because it's just a regular train, right?

00:39:11 John Daub: Right. So that's another thing that you should consider again. I tell people — you know what itinerary is — is the best itinerary that you should do if your first time coming to Japan, you're going to be doing probably what everybody else is doing. And that is where the prices are — the most expensive places are the most packed and probably you'll have a really good experience. But also keep in mind that it's the experience that everybody else is having. So I always say to people, add in one place off of the beaten path, at least one. Greg, do you have any off the beaten path places that people should—

00:39:53 Greg Lane: It's not totally off the beaten path, but I mentioned it before, and I think the major beneficiary of this is going to be Kanazawa with that arch pass.

00:40:01 John Daub: So, yeah, the Hokuriku Arch Pass.

00:40:02 Greg Lane: Kanazawa is just really nice. It's one of my favorite cities in Japan. And it's kind of — it's got a bit of that Kyoto feel to it. It's kind of well preserved and it's got lots of like machiya — like the traditional houses — and it's got like tea districts and like a whole kind of neighborhood of samurai houses and things. It's kind of — and it's not really on people's radar.

00:40:28 John Daub: I think it is weird like that. It was mostly East Asian countries were visiting and there are more tourists coming from China than from the west, of course. But I think Kanazawa — I like Kyoto, I like it a lot. It's just too crowded now. It's not a — for me, it hasn't been a great experience for the last 10 years. Kanazawa is very much the same feel as you said, but it has so much more space. It's so much cheaper. They have a strong geisha culture. You will see real geisha walking around there.

00:40:52 Greg Lane: Very compact. You can walk around.

00:40:54 John Daub: Yeah. People are more friendly — they're more inviting. I found that it's not the fault of the Kyoto residents. They're just desensitized by the tourists. They don't see them as guests, they see them as tourists. I think the rest of Japan will see you as a guest.

00:41:07 Greg Lane: Yeah. Kanazawa, they're grateful that you visited.

00:41:10 John Daub: I get that feeling too.

00:41:11 Greg Lane: Whereas in Kyoto, they tolerate you.

00:41:15 John Daub: That's the way — yeah, they just tolerate. They don't quite get it. I mean, that's when we get signs like "no photos of the geisha here. No photos at all, in fact."

00:41:25 Greg Lane: Well, the funny thing with that is — like, if you see a maiko in Kyoto, there's a fairly good chance that tourist — tourists dressed as a maiko anyway, as part of a maiko experience rather than actual maiko.

00:41:36 John Daub: But, you know, I remember I got so many funny stories. I remember there are these two girls from Taiwan that dressed up in yukata and were walking around. And they painted their faces too. And all of the Western tourists who didn't understand Japanese because they were speaking in Chinese — and they're gorgeous. They kept getting their photos taken. And then I remember them walking away. It's like, "oh, great, we got one of a geisha." And I didn't actually realize those are tourists in cosplay.

00:41:51 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah.

00:41:51 John Daub: I do think that Kyoto should hire some geisha maybe to walk around for those kinds of pictures, but yeah.

00:41:56 Greg Lane: Yeah, definitely. Oh, that would be great. Like, you know, you have geisha guides just like walking around, like — want a photo?

00:42:03 John Daub: Yeah, yeah. I think it'd be pretty cool to do that and have a sign to announce that we're okay to take photos. Watch the line of people queue up for that, though. That's the one that you definitely want to have when you come back — you know, home unit and see. Let's wrap this up here. We now understand why they raised the pass prices. We're both kind of in agreement that it was harsh, the PR nightmare, I think, sort of. They didn't do it really well. Slightly critical, I guess we are.

00:42:34 Greg Lane: Yeah.

00:42:34 John Daub: Well, life goes on, well—

00:42:37 Greg Lane: Yeah. What are you gonna do? You know, it's like — I don't know — like, you know, we all have opinions about Japanese bureaucracy, but once the juggernaut starts, maybe they'll change the price. But it's definitely going to happen, I think.

00:42:49 John Daub: I think so too. I think it's definitely going to happen. I think that I do love JR. I love Japan Rail, and I'm going to defend them for a second here. When I first came to Japan in '98, there was no service for tourists, foreign tourists at all on Japan Rail. Very little things in English, even the signs. And many of the places didn't have Romaji on it back then. Since 2013, I've noticed that JR has so much more in English — brochures, maps, English speakers, training to deal with tourists from outside of Japan, how to handle different situations. Sometimes they're learning very well, very quickly. That has a lot of cost. The last two, two and a half years, they were in bad situation, laying off a lot of workers. Now they're rehiring them at a higher cost because inflation has been hard on everything. Your flight to Japan right now is three times more than it was just two years ago. There's a reason for that. That price also has to be translated in the ticket prices here. The domestic prices went up as well.

00:44:03 Greg Lane: Yeah, about a month—

00:44:04 John Daub: 10 yen.

00:44:05 Greg Lane: Yeah, 10 yen. But — yeah, not — not much.

00:44:07 John Daub: But for the tourists though, that JR Rail price has been undervalued for a very long time.

00:44:14 Greg Lane: It's been very good value.

00:44:16 John Daub: That's what he would say as a cheapo, and I'll say as I'm also a cheapo, though. But I don't know — a little bit economic sense, they didn't really raise the price to inflation. And as the US continued to make higher raises, wages and Japan's wages stayed flat for like the last 30 years, that price remained the same. And it has been a steady thing and getting better and better value. I knew that they were going to raise the price. I just didn't think it was going to be, yeah, this high. So this is the new normal. This pass might not be for you, might not be for everybody, but the point is it probably wasn't for you to begin with. The pass was — there are so many regional passes that might have been better for you. For a lot of people that are just riding it to go to Kyoto and back—

00:45:05 Greg Lane: Yeah, yeah. Or just around Tokyo—

00:45:09 John Daub: You might get some value out of that. And by the way, the passes are just a ticket now, right?

00:45:14 Greg Lane: Yep. You don't get a little booklet like you used to.

00:45:17 John Daub: You don't get a booklet, you get just a little ticket, which is kind of convenient because it fits in your wallet now a lot better. What about last thing? I wanted to end this with the IC cards here. People can say, "I'm just gonna use my IC card." Is that a cheaper thing to do? I think pass is even worth it for—

00:45:32 Greg Lane: Not for taking the Shinkansen for everything.

00:45:36 John Daub: Let's just say for within Tokyo travel, is it better to do that or do you think it's better?

00:45:36 Greg Lane: Well, just for within Tokyo — yeah, it makes sense. Like I personally don't think any of the one-day passes, for example, are worthwhile because you know, like even the subway one — you have to take five trips in a day or something. It's like, you know, just slow down, you know, just—

00:45:53 John Daub: That's true.

00:45:54 Greg Lane: Just don't feel like you have to squeeze everything in a day. Like, you know, that's what these passes are for. Like if you're an intense, crazy person who wants to see four museums in a day, then that's your thing. But otherwise, just use a Suica or a Pasmo for getting around Tokyo and look at some of these regional passes for going a bit further.

00:46:18 John Daub: Yeah, I think so too. We also explored the buses and the other private trains. There are ferries and the ferry network is awesome in Japan — Niigata to Otaru, we have ferries that leave from Odaiba to go to Tokushima, which is pretty darn cheap. I remember taking the ferries from Shimonoseki to Korea, to Busan. I would take that on weekends sometimes with a student discount — that's half price. So there's a lot of ferries that you can take, which makes it even more adventurous. There are tons of other ways, including hitchhiking, which I don't recommend, but I do quite a bit. And that's free. I'm just putting that out there. There are risks though, but I do like hitchhiking and rent a car as well. So there's just more than one way to get around Japan. I just hope that this pass doesn't keep people from coming to Japan because some of the comments that I read — I should do a reaction to them — what you guys have written, it's like a little bit over the top. I think you're maybe reacting a little bit too much, like, "screw Japan, I'm going to Korea now because of this rate hike." You know what? You probably weren't coming to Japan anyways.

00:47:27 Greg Lane: You're still paying three times as much for your plane ticket.

00:47:30 John Daub: The plane ticket prices are probably going to be high based on just a simple supply and demand. And the fuel surcharge right now is hideous. Anyways, Greg, thank you so much.

00:47:39 Greg Lane: No problem. Thanks for having me.

00:47:40 John Daub: Greg is the co-founder of TokyoCheapo.com. The link is in the description, and thank you moderators for providing that as well. And if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'm happy to get to you tonight. And tonight I probably will do a reaction video to your comments because we received like 300 comments on it. A lot of them are like over the top ridiculous and I think I can address that. And in a way, I probably will defend JR a little bit because look, bottom line, JR's awesome and we love them. So thank you, JR.

00:48:07 Greg Lane: Trains are cool.

00:48:08 John Daub: Trains are cool. All right, bye guys.