G'day again,
I posted here a little while ago with an itinerary check, but I neglected to ask an important question. Looking at travel planning sites like Hyperdia, I've noticed that a fair portion of the price for each trip is made up of seat booking fees.
I'll be travelling from 13 March to 13 April, and I'm just wondering whether I'll need to make a lot of bookings, or if I can just get on a train and go...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
Hi again!
There are a couple of fees that make up the total amount of a ticket price.
For instance let's have a look at the route Tokyo - Kyoto. The total price for the journey is ¥ 13,020, as you can see this is made up of different fares. The Fare (¥ 7,980), the Seat Fee (¥ 4,730) and the Seat reservation fee (¥ 310).
The Fare is what you pay for the distance traveled.
The Seat Fee is the fee for special trains, such as bullet trains and limited express trains, local trains don't require a seat fee.
The reservation fee, is what you pay if you want to reserve a seat in advance. This way you are always sure of a seat and don't have to line up on the station before the train arrived.
All these fees are covered by the JR Pass, so you don't have to worry about them. You can take reserved or non-reserved seats with the JR Pass so you can just hop on the train if you feel like it.
I hope this helps!
Daniel
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