00:00:01 John Daub: I know what some of you might be thinking. Again? As the Yamanote Line takes off from Yurakucho Station right there.

00:00:20 John Daub: It was announced just a couple of days ago that JR East (JR Higashi-Nihon) is going to be increasing prices on the Yamanote Line, among other lines, mostly commuter lines here in Tokyo.

00:00:35 John Daub: And this change is going over the entire country as Japan Rail adjusts for not the number of tourists coming in. This has nothing to do with that, but this has mostly to do with the declining population.

00:00:48 John Daub: There's just not enough riders to make up the costs anymore. They've got to raise the price. I think it was the first time in like 30 years or something.

00:00:57 John Daub: So it's a pretty significant period of time since the last time they raised the prices. I think there was a price change on the Yamanote Line. I think it used to be 130 yen when I first came here.

00:01:10 John Daub: So there have been some price increases, very incremental. But this seems like the biggest across-the-board price increase for a very long time.

00:01:18 John Daub: But it's still a ridiculously cheap ticket for tourists coming to Japan. But for Japanese, we're going to feel this quite a bit because wages have not been going up.

00:01:27 John Daub: Let me just show you here. And also, there's one other thing I want to talk about. There was a big change to the much-beloved Seishun 18 Kippu (Youth 18 Ticket) that happened a couple of months ago that I did not talk about.

00:01:40 John Daub: And this one really does make a difference. It does impact me amongst other people. So we're going to talk about this as well.

00:01:46 John Daub: Let's go over what the price increase is here. So according to the news here, the tickets are going to go up. It says it's going to start in 2026.

00:01:57 John Daub: So there's, I mean, it's not like a thing that's big news, but I want you to want it. Well, it is big news, but I want it to be in your mind because a lot of you are planning your trips in the future.

00:02:09 John Daub: I don't think it's going to make a big dent for tourists. Maybe it's something that you want to consider because the information is going to be in your mind.

00:02:16 John Daub: This is in Japanese because I haven't seen anything in English yet. But going from Tokyo Station to Ueno, it would cost 200 yen. The ticket price is going to increase by 30 yen.

00:02:28 John Daub: If you're going from Tokyo Station on the Yamanote Line to Shibuya, it's going to increase by 50 yen. To Shinjuku, Shibuya, 50 yen. That's a longer trip around.

00:02:38 John Daub: So the price increases there. I think it was like an 8% increase on the price of the tickets.

00:02:43 John Daub: Is just I think it was like one station oh wait one two three four stations where we get Tokyo Yurakucho Shimbashi okay two stations away the price is 160 yen it goes up 10 yen to 170 yen it's not really that big of a deal for tourists I think.

00:03:00 John Daub: Now on the Chuo Line which is the one that cuts across the city the Marunouchi the Yamanote Line the green one did you see behind me goes around the city this one the price increases are a lot more here from Tokyo Station to Shinjuku it's a 50 yen increase the same as the Yamanote but to Kichijoji it's 440 yen or a 30 yen increase that's not as much that's good that's a little bit odd then Tachikawa a 60 yen Hachioji which is further out going west to the Tokyo mountains 80 yen to Mount Takao Takao-san it's a 1040 yen but a 90 yen increase.

00:03:35 John Daub: It's going to be a lot of money for the Yamanote Line so I think that's a good thing to be Otsuki which is 1600 yen which is even further out there near Yamanashi that's 80 yen or that is Yamanashi and Fuchu I believe is 2420 yen there's 110 yen increase.

00:03:55 John Daub: So it's like really small but if you're traveling quite a bit on local lines it's going to add up quite quickly and this might be something that throws you over the top between buying a day pass and then buying the tickets one by one.

00:04:09 John Daub: That's another thing Tokyo does have day passes for the JR network this price again like there's other there's so many JR companies JR Higashi-Nihon is JR East JR East is Tokyo and the Tohoku region going up the Shinkansen running down there's Tokyo Shinagawa and maybe Yokohama that might be JR East and then it turns to JR Central which is the rest of the line it's a little complicated but JR East probably makes the most money out of all of them basically out of Tokyo.

00:04:38 John Daub: But I have friends who work in JR and many of them have told me that they don't make much money from the commuter rail lines the 150 200 yen tickets they're not looking they make a lot more money from the businesses around it.

00:04:52 John Daub: And I'm fascinated by JR not by just the trains but how they build their business around the stations they have convenience stores they have the NewDays (Newsday) I don't know if you guys know about that they have restaurants they have all sorts of services travel services now highway buses they built a business around the train station so they're going to make money.

00:05:16 John Daub: Now they're going into inbound tourism so I'm happy to help them with that I really am I'm just doing some episodes with them but I think overall though the most money that they make is from the Shinkansen so we had a price increase about two years ago announced two years ago that was pretty significant for you and those that price is staying the same so not to worry about that.

00:05:41 John Daub: These price increases do make a big deal when you are coming into Tokyo when you are traveling abroad so here's the vending machine as it is in 2024 December that's 150 yen for a ticket.

00:05:55 John Daub: This is the basic ticket that's going to go up to I think it was 170 yen or something like that it's funny I think the IC price might be more expensive it's at 160 yen but the cheapest price available is 150 yen it's interesting right.

00:06:13 John Daub: I took a picture of the network here so according to this if you buy a ticket from Tokyo Station and you're going to Shimbashi it's 150 yen it's just two stops going north three stops is 170 yen so after two stops it gets quite well it gets a little bit more expensive.

00:06:31 John Daub: It's still like pocket change but if you go to cut across to Shinjuku it gets a 210 yen and then once you get out into the countryside it keeps on escalating as you can see based on distance which is fascinating.

00:06:45 John Daub: A lot of you might not be able to read the kanji it's Yurakucho which is where I am is the one that's in the red box in the top above that with 150 in there is Tokyo and above that in the next box is Akihabara and then the next box above that 170 yen is Ueno to the right of that is Kinshicho and to the left of that is Shinjuku on the other side of the circle that's the Japanese kanji it's good to know this kind of stuff when you come here.

00:07:15 John Daub: All right there'll be more information on this and we'll talk about it too you can see there's this is actually a live stream here so interesting thing I want to talk about which impacts me more than you perhaps but this is the pass that is so beloved is the Seishun 18 Kippu right here this comes from NHK this is an old school one I love it because they stamp the heck out of it sometimes and it's so colorful it's like a passport.

00:07:45 John Daub: It's basically a local train ticket it's a ticket for local trains only no Shinkansen or express trains you can't upgrade or anything off of this ticket it's here listed as 12,050 yen which is like 78 dollars I'm gonna think of the exchange rate this is from 2021.

00:08:05 John Daub: That is so ridiculous for five days of non-consecutive unlimited travel within those five days that you choose or five people for one day or one person for five days it was so flexible.

00:08:17 John Daub: It's called the Seishun Juhachi Kippu which is the 18 ticket like the youth 18 ticket but you don't have to be a youth to take it anybody can take this if you want to go for an adventure local trains are awesome you really start to see the future out there when you ride the Seishun 18 Kippu.

00:08:36 John Daub: But it's changed now so we see here let's look at the validity for what this ticket was they did it three times a year spring they would sell it from March 1st to April 10th and would be on sale I said on sale from February 20th to March 31st and valid to use from March 1st to April 10th you see summer from July 20th to September 10th sold July 1st to August 31st.

00:09:05 John Daub: I always loved going into September because after the summer period the trains weren't as crowded so I'd be riding my five days then well winter was December so the winter one's going on right now winter uh uses oh no in a couple of days December 10th to January 10th but I'm not even sure that they even have it now it's kind of a sad thing here.

00:09:28 John Daub: And according to the internet like this is huge news to me on October 24th 2024 the ticket conditions were changed for the first time since 1984.

00:09:39 John Daub: Okay it was this issue the new tickets are valid for five days that means you can't break up your trip and still use the pass cannot be shared between multiple people that's a big killer because you get five friends on one day that was always nice.

00:09:55 John Daub: And you can now use the pass through the automatic ticket gate so you don't get stamped at the exit by the station master which is kind of sad the five-day ticket price remained the same as before and a new three-day variant also has been made available for 10,000 yen so they raised the price so it was 12,000 yen for five days now it's three days for 10,000 yen.

00:10:22 John Daub: It's still cheap 3,333 yen a day that's pretty cheap but it's consecutive which means like you have to use it but the three-day pass maybe makes up for it you just get another one then you got six days but then you get a day you don't need this pass would end up at those discounted ticket offices which are also like pawn shops sometimes where you can see like two days reused and there's one day remaining and you can get a discount somebody sold their ticket for like a thousand yen or something like that.

00:11:00 John Daub: So it's a pretty good deal and you can get a discount for like a thousand yen and they're selling it for 1500 yen and the ticket resellers would make 500 yen on that extra day you can't do that anymore because apparently they're also like have your name on it and they're interchangeable you got to pick it up at the window and you have to register your name I don't know how they check but like they kind of want to lock you into this stuff.

00:11:28 John Daub: And I guess it makes sense they could try to make money and all that they don't make a lot off of the local train network places like JR Hokkaido are losing money there's just so many fewer travelers than there were 20 years ago than there were five years ago.

00:11:44 John Daub: There's the Keihin-Tohoku Line which is gonna get more expensive but I'm glad that they have the trains running so frequently and so often in Tokyo I can understand the price increase in the whole scheme of things it's not very much.

00:12:00 John Daub: I know that the tickets are 130 yen so this price increase probably happened about 10 years ago or something for the local ticket trains but this is the most significant one that's across the board so you're gonna feel it the thing is that your Japanese wages haven't really increased much so we're seeing commuter passes also go up.

00:12:23 John Daub: Let me take you and there's a Shinkansen going through but you can see it on the other side it goes a lot slower right around here as it makes its way into Tokyo Station but these changes are all significant they all have an impact.

00:12:38 John Daub: And the more that they chip away with the amount of disposable money that you have on your trip the more it takes away from other stuff and you know Japan's still a pretty good place to be and I think it's going to be a darn cheap destination if you ask me and I'm pretty happy that they still keeping it that way.

00:13:00 John Daub: The price increase for tourists probably not going to impact you much I think that maybe it's going to cost you another a few hundred a few dollars more in the whole scheme of things.

00:13:11 John Daub: Look what you walk in the stations you can see they're selling products now like a JR they're selling products like a shopping mall from a vending machine they also have these booths where you could work that's all JR run they have lockers in here they're all making money vending machines so they find ways to make money out of this business which is amazing they charge rent for the businesses that are here.

00:13:36 John Daub: And then you have places like this right here one of the reasons I wanted to bring you here NewDays is a convenience store that's run by JR they used to have a place called Becker's which was a hamburger cafe place that was also run by JR.

00:13:52 John Daub: And there's a ticket booth right there and you can see the prices on that board is going to change maybe they don't raise the prices too often because they have to change all of the boards across the entire city and these vending machines you can see not a lot of people are using them at all they're not really used because everybody has IC cards.

00:14:14 John Daub: They're used more for charging and charging spots are in convenience stores and they're all over the place now for Suica it doesn't matter you can use your Suica card in other areas of Japan and you can use other cards in Tokyo you can charge them interchangeably it doesn't really matter so much.

00:14:31 John Daub: But yeah all these businesses underneath here have to pay rent to JR and that's pretty interesting stuff all right everybody I hope that this news this news is a little bit shocking to me because it's like prices going up again but prices are always going to go up again and I can just hope that we also make more money too so you can pay for these price increases.

00:15:00 John Daub: John is helping out from his trunk here I have fond memories using this Seishun 18 Kippu but traveled a month across Japan using them having an IC card availability gone back to normal yeah I don't I think let's look at this John you know what let's go check it out right now I'm pretty sure you can get IC cards.

00:15:25 John Daub: You can see people tourists leaving their bags outside which is pretty normal in Tokyo I don't think you can you can't do that in New York City let me see here let me change it to English for you yeah it's fine. Purchase new Suica. We're good.

00:15:45 John Daub: You got to get your name on there, though. You can put your name in here. Am I male or female? How dare you? Okay, I guess you don't even have to put in your real name.

00:15:58 John Daub: Anyways, that should answer your question. We have IC cards. I don't know, YouTubers still making videos about that. It's kind of been a non-news item for a while, but now it's confirmed. I have done it.

00:16:13 John Daub: There's a garden up there, which is kind of neat. Maybe there's nobody up there, but you get a chance to see the Shinkansen much clearer up there on the deck above here. I didn't even know about that for a long time, and then I saw it on Google Earth.

00:16:28 John Daub: All right, everybody, take care. I'll see you in another live stream real soon. Thanks, John. And if you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below.

00:16:42 John Daub: Tell me about your experience with the Seishun 18 Kippu. If you don't know this ticket, you don't have to get a JR Rail Pass. Yeah, you can use the Shinkansen, but there's something really special about taking a local pass.

00:17:00 John Daub: Maybe buy a ticket to a region of Japan on the Shinkansen, and then use this pass to get around locally. Maybe make some extra time for it, but riding the train in itself, take a book, look out the window, get a bento.

00:17:15 John Daub: It's part of the culture, and it's a way for you to see the countryside as it rolls past the window. I love it. It's very cool. You can get a beer and drink it on the train out in the countryside as well if you want to.

00:17:30 John Daub: Just make sure you don't drink too much. Consider the other people around you. And that's it. All right, everybody. See you in another live stream tomorrow.

00:17:42 John Daub: Take you to another place around the country or here in Tokyo. Mata ne. That's a bakery.