Green Car seats from Osaka to Tokyo

Hi there,

Going Green (so to speak) is a great option! I just finished a 3 week trip with the Green JR Pass and it was wonder full. I can also confirm that all Shinkansen between Osaka and Tokyo (knows as the Tōkaidō) have green seats.

One thing I would like to point out, is that you always need to make seat reservations for Green Cars, you can do so at any station with a manned ticket counter. I would recommend doing so at least 20 minutes before you depart, sometimes it can get a little busy and it would be a shame missing the train because of this.

Hope this helps!
-Daniel

Thank you for the advice, Daniel. You only need to reserve Green Car seats on Shinkansen trains, don't you? I will reserve seats on most long distance Shinkansen routes as early as possible but for short trips such as Atami to Ito & Osaka to Wakayama, you can just jump on the Green cars, can't you?

Hi again,

All green seats are reserved, so a reservation will always be needed even for small trips.
This applies to both Shinkansen and limited express trains.

Noted with much thanks.

Hi Daniel - Thanks for this information! Last time I used the green car it was only some Hikari on the Tokaido that had Green Cars. Happy to hear that Green seats are more available!

Hi Mari,

I personally think this is because many of the older train types that used to serve as high speed Nozomi trains have retired to slower Hikari and Kodama trains, I was rather surprise when my Kodama yesterday had 3 (!) green cars and I had one to myself :)

You can see seat availability here, it is in Japanese only but you can select the station names by Kanji.

Try a search and you can see that all trains on on the Tokaido have green seats now :D

Some trains between Shin-Osaka and Kagoshina-Chuo, in the past the Hikari Rail Star and now the Sakura, don't have a Green Car but this is becoming rare too.

this is really lovely news Daniel! Thank you!