Hi there,
I will be traveling to Japan with my girlfriend from Jan 28th till the 12th of Feb. We will be traveling across a number of cities throughout Japan during our stay. I am aware there is a large number of previous post relating to mine. However, I was hoping to post my travel plans and intensions and hopefully seek some confirmation or advice from people with experience in traveling Japan.
Our trip is as follows:
Day 1 – 5: Tokyo City (Airport to hotel transfer incl.)
Day 5-7: Osaka Sightseeing (Hikari Shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka station) (Activate 7 day JR Rail pass on Day 5)
Day 7-9: Hiroshima (Sakura Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima Station)
Day 9-11: Kyoto (Sakura Shinkansen from Hiroshima Station to Shin-Osaka, Kodama Bullet Rain to Kyoto Station)
Day 11-14: Furano Ski resort (Fly from Kansai Airport to New Chitose Airport. Shuttle transfer to accomadation)
Day 14-16: Sapporo (Shuttle transfer to Sapporo incl.)
Day 16: Fly back to Tokyo (Haneda) from Sapporo early morning, head to the city for the day and return to the airport for 23:00 departure to Singapore.
In all cities we will be regularly utilising local transport to ferry to/from the Shinkansen to accommodation and for sightseeing purposes.
At this stage I am pretty happy with what I have organized as for transportation and itinerary. However, ANY advice from people with experience in traveling cross-country of Japan would be greatly appreciated.
My other pressing question relates to the IC cards used on local trains. I am interested in a simple way to travel on all/most trains, bus or other public transport in the cities I will be traveling to. I am aware of the suica, pasmo and other various cards available. Would I be correct in assuming the Suica card would have the most coverage across all these cities? If not what would be my best option? I am also interest in finding out the cheapest option from Haneda Airport to Tokyo city (and return in the evening on my final day).
Thank you in advance for any assistance,
Brenton
