JR Pass – Shinkansen wheelchair reserved seat
JR Pass – Shinkansen wheelchair reserved seat
Hello everybody,
so we are planning our next trip to Japan this october 2024.
We stay in Tokyo 3 days, then we go to Kyoto and sleep there for 7 days but planned to visit several places from there : Osaka, Nara, Hiroshima and Nagoya.
After a lot of complicated calculations, we think it should be better to get the JR Pass because it will offer more flexibility in our organization, and excepted the first part from Tokyo from Kyoto that will not be possible to include because of the dates, we will take the 7 days JR pass to include all the other journeys of our trip into it. Once in Japan, we will exchange the voucher for a real JRPass valid from date to date.
If I understand well, with this we can make the journey but still need to book a wheelchair place (+a normal seat for my wife) to be sure to have a seat in the train.I found that we have to go directly at a station desk to reserve a seat, and it may take some time.
I think I can prepare a complete list of the date, hour and station from/to where we have to go, and make all the bookings at once.
Is this a good idea ? Or is it too complicated and coming from a paranoId european mind ? 🙂
Here in Belgium we have to book every wheelchair assistance weeks in advance to be sure, so I was a little lost first time in Tokyo metro seeing that we can just come and tell where we go and everythings go fine.
Is taking Shinkansen train as easy as using Tokyo metro ?
- 5 Replies
If you want to sit on the deck (the area between carriages where the door and toilet is, you can be a little looser with timing.
However, the seats in the accessible carriage are reserved, so you can’t just sit anywhere and do need to book them. (There are other carriages that are free seating and it is like the metro where you sit where it is open. But it isn’t accessible.) You can book everything at once if you know the dates and times, or book one at a time as needed. You should book at least a day in advance though. It can take quite a bit of time, so, doing everything at once might be best.
UPDATE and NEW QUESTION : if we need to go to the “Midori no Madoguchi” to get the Shinkansen tickets and seats (finally we don’t use JR Pass), I found on the web that is only open at 10:00 AM. Is this real or can we go to an office in Tokyo Station earlier in the morning ? Even if we have to come back later, after the employee made the booking, we would like not being stuck till 10:00 AM to optimize our routing and planning… Does someone have the information ? On JR Website, it tells it opens sometimes at 6:30 AM, but is the part selling wheelchair ticket available at this early time ?
I have a feeling even if you go early it won’t matter if the accessible booking office isn’t open as they don’t make the decision at the Midori no Madoguchi, but the staff calls the other office. So if it isn’t open…
So you are not using JR Pass but just buying the tickets? If you are using the Tokaido Line (ie Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka) then you can buy accessible tickets online.
https://smart-ex.jp/en/lp/app/
Just note, you cannot book a disabled ticket and companion ticket at the same time but need to book one, then go through it again to book the other.
UPDATE and FINAL RESULTS : we are back from Japan, and Shinkansen booking was really much more easy than we thought. We went directly to a Shinkansen Ticket office in Tokyo Station at 9:30 AM, with the document we carefully prepared with our 4 journeys on the Shinkansen : Tokyo > Kyoto, Kyoto > Hiroshima (and back the same day), and Kyoto > Shinagawa, with departure times (and everything translated in both English and Japanese). The employee had a big smile and was very happy, he booked the 4 journeys with my wheelchair space and my wife next to me in the train in approximatively 10 minutes. Then we got immediately all the needed tickets and saved a lot of time and stress, it was done in 30 minutes at all.
I also confirm that we tried train, metro, shinkansen, bus and even ferry, and everything was really fine with almost absolutely no problem. The only stress we had was when there was a communication problem and not understood where we have to go or do not find an elevator. Everything was solved within minutes, it remains much more easier to move around in Japan even without speaking Japanese, than in Europe where everyone speaks english but where procedures and helpful mind are not so common…
Great to hear, thanks for the update!
Log in to reply.