Bumcamping in Japan

Step 2 Train Pass and Bike Cover

I had a JR rail pass which is only for tourists. It must be bought outside of the country. It's still expensive, but a lot cheaper than individual train tickets. When bringing your bike onto a train, you have to put a cover over your bike. I used this big brown bag. Later I bought a much lighter bike cover in a dollar store. In the station I partly folded the bike as seen here for ease in wheeling it around.

Comments

[theprofessor]

the whole buying individual tickets is more expensive is a well perpetuated myth, It does save you the hassle dealing with people if you don't speak the language and if you plan on going up and down the country on 5 hour train rides for a week it may be a deal, but the last time i was in japan my tickets for getting around came in well under $100 usd which is significantly less than a JR pass.

[TimAnderson]

A good point, do the comparison before you go and plan your travels as well as you can. But $100 sounds really low to me.
A one-way trip from Tokyo to Osaka is about $150 according to this slick site (click on the "english" button).
Here's the JR Pass cost.
The bus from Narita(international flights) and Haneda(domestic flights) cost me about $30. I did some visiting in my old hometown (Akita) for a few days and didn't activate my train pass until I was ready to do a whole lot of train riding. There are some local non-JR train lines that don't cost the same as the Shinkansen, subways/masstransit that vary from city to city, and there's likely to be a variety of price/mile lines within a city. One thing that's cheap is beer. After I found out they cost $2 on the train I'd offer one to anyone sitting next to me. It made the language practice a lot easier. The pass made it easy to find camping, I'd pick a stop just outside a big city and get off there at night. The raised tracks of the station put a huge area out of the rain, and small stations don't have enough tenants to fill it up with stores. I've had a good nights sleep under a few of those.

[theprofessor]

Again if you are going to be going up and down the country several times a JR pass is worth it, but if you were only going one way and bouncing around town you can come in well under, in my case i never took any shinkasen which is how i kept my tickets low. the express train from narita was only 10 or 15 bucks to ueno where i jumped on the yamanote line to ikebukuro which was a dollar or 2. the rest of the time I bounced around the Tokyo area mainly, as I had no cross country trips it was very easy to come in under $100 despite the fact that EVERYONE had told me I HAD to get a JR pass, i just thought i would pass along the fact that you can get around just fine and cheaply without one, but i agree doing a cost comparison ahead of time is best and for me knowing that it can be cheaper is helpful. Matt

[theprofessor]

sorry for double post but an added tip ""leaving staion" kara "arriving staion" made kippu o "number (ichi/ni/san)" mai kudasai" will get you a ticket. in my case for my express ticket from the airport it would have been narita kara ueno made kippu o nimai kudasai (i was traveling with another person)