Is Green Car (1st class) worth it on the Japanese Bullet Train?

[doodlepants]

We're trying to decide whether to spend the extra for green car on the Shinkansen. If you've travelled on the Shinkansen would you say green car was worth the extra 20000 yen?

When are you thinking of travelling and can you afford it? We’re just back from Japan and paid the extra but I don’t know if it was worth it as each train line was so different. Depending on your route it might be ok to go standard and upgrade for the longer journeys only.

Man in seat 61 is worth a read (and generally considered an authority on all things international rail) https://www.seat61.com/Japan.htm#What_are_Japanese_trains_like

i haven’t done trains in Japan but he has pictures and advice on 1st and 2nd class

Is this for a single journey or for the JR pass?

Inside Kyoto has a good page about this. In short green cars are generally a bit less crowded and seats are bigger but standard class is also comfortable and quiet and having go through the rigmarole of reserving seats for each journey makes it somewhat less convenient than the standard pass.

Have you looked at whether the JR pass is actually worth the cost for you? With the price increase, for most Japan trips it’s now unlikely to be worth the cost. You have to take a lot of shinkansen to get value for money now. A Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Tokyo sort of trip wouldn’t warrant a JR pass anymore.

https://www.insidekyoto.com/jr-trains-green-cars-versus-ordinary-cars

https://www.insidekyoto.com/japan-rail-pass-is-it-worth-it

When I used it about 4 years ago (Tokyo Kyoto Hiroshima Tokyo), we went standard which was fine, but one thing to be aware of is that there's very little luggage space. Japanese travellers send their luggage on ahead and just take essentials with them. It's set up to be very easy, especially if you're staying in hotels.

Tokyo-Kyoto-Hiroshima-Tokyo is a good example of the sort of trip that years ago used to justify the cost of a 14 day pass. It’s not worth the cost of a 7 day pass now. Individual shinkansen tickets for that route add up to £250 including fast Nozomi trains that aren’t covered by the JR pass, which is £270 for a week. I’d buy individual tickets and use the faster Shinkansen for that route and still probably save money over the JR pass.

Thanks all, we're thinking of a 7 day pass because we are doing a lot of travelling. We're doing Tokyo - Hiroshima (with Nizomo add-on) - Osaka - Kyoto -Shimiyoshida (which uses Shinkansen for part of the journey) then back to Tokyo, again partly using Shinkansen. We did work out the individual cost and the saving is very small for a standard car ticket (with the price increase) so just about worth it but we thought it was also worth it for the convenience of having just one ticket. Green car would obviously make it less affordable for the pass, so that's why we're wondering about whether it's worth it.

We only have hand luggage (we're quite used to that!) so that won't be too much of an issue.

Thanks for links, I'm going to have a look at them.

Sorry, we're also travelling end of March beginning of April so quite a busy time!

Having to make reservations for the green car was a bit time consuming and a lot of times we were limited by availability but yet once on the green cars were virtually empty! Given the massive price hike at the end of last year I don’t think upgrading is worth it especially if you are going to pay for the Nizomo add on anyway.

We were there for just over 2 weeks and had a fabulous time - already planning the next trip back!

I don't know what the green car is like but the standard car was absolutely fine for us. We made reservations every time we went on a longish journey. We had 2 full sized suitcases and had no problem finding a space for them. I don't think the standard cars have refreshment on board but food and drink is readily available to buy at the stations and on platforms before you board. Our longest journey was about 5 hours and we were very comfortable.

Also the article above says you have to reserve your seats in a ticket office but we bought our JR pass through the official site and were able to make all our reservations online a month before our pass started. It was really easy to change the reservations online as well.

How long are you in Japan in total? If you’re there a couple of weeks or more then I’d be inclined to forget the JR pass and take a slightly more relaxed itinerary rather than squeezing all of your intercity travel into the 7 day rail pass window. It won’t work out much different in price (maybe even slightly cheaper once you account for the extra ¥6,500 for the nozomi add on) but may be more enjoyable. 5 cities/towns in 7 days is a pretty punishing schedule. I think a slightly more relaxed schedule would be a better use of a bit of extra money than the green car. Presuming that you are overnighting in those cities you’d only have 6 nights to divide between Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Shimiyoshida. I’d say you want a bit longer than that to get the most from them.