掲示板 Forums - Using public transport (outside Tokyo) in Japan?

Hey everyone!

I'm going to be visiting Japan for two months in September and it starts getting serious. We have now planned our first week in detail and reserved guesthouses and such.

The Plan: We're starting off in Hokkaido and gonna fly into Memanbetsu Airport. From there we need to take a bus (Shari bus) to Utoro. Later we have to take this bus back to Shirietoko-Shari-Station where we'll switch to a train to Kushiro. In Kushiro we take a bus (Akan bus) to the observatory and back and then leave with a rental car, because we want to go to Biratori (stay at an Ainu owned hostel and see a museum) and the busses there are a joke somehow, it's almost impossible to reach by public transport. We will hand off our car in Tomakomai and head on to Noboribetsu with the train again. Here we take a bus (Donan bus) to Hell valley and back and continue to Hakodate (passing the Onumakoen on the way) where we will later take the shinkansen to Machinohe. Here we still have to take another train to Mutsu-Minato and this is the first time (probably we swiched from JR Hokkaido to JR East now) that it says "IC preferred" on the website.

So you see there is a lot of trains and busses and everthing is planned very thightly (we have some leeway but we have to meet our choir at Ichinoseki and we have got to be there in time, so if we want to see things before, we just have to be a bit stressed - the last month of our trip is not planned at all to make up for it).

What I noticed:

- They say "IC preferred" in Hachinohe, but you can't get a Suica card anymore (because of the chip shortage) and we don't have iPhones. The Welcomecard is still available but it's only usable for 28 days and we're going to hit Tokyo for the first time after 21 days and are only really going to stay there at the very end of the two months. I think there the card would be most useful. Is there any other card we could get or do we just have to buy a ticket each time we use public transport?

- The busses - in Hokkaido at least - are all run by different companies, in our case by the Shari, Akan and Donan. The Sharibus at least I think is just the local bus, but the other two seem to be private companies, because the local bus only runs within the cities and not to the attractions you actually want to see ^^" We assume these will not be payable by card, but instead must be paid for with the driver in cash? (the Sharibus has a ticket machine at the airport apparently) Does anyone have any experiences with the busses in Hokkaido?

- Can I buy the train tickets in advance? Some trains force us to pay an extra seat charge. If I paid by suica how would that work? Do I really still need to buy the seat ticket at a machine everytime? And also: I saw pictures of the Higashi Kushiro Eki and it doesn't look like they even have a ticket gate. Does someone come and check your ticket in the train?

And what about the shinkansen? Can I at least buy that ticket in advance somehow? If I have to have a reserved seat every time, I should at least be able to reserve it, right? I wish I could just have all my tickets for everything in my folder and just pull it out as necessary. We have to stay it Haneda Airport for 9 hours, so we can get the Welcome Suica there, but is there a way to already get the tickets for the seat-charge-trains at that airport if you know which trains you are going to take? The trains in the regions we are in only go like 4 times a day, so I really want to make sure we are not going to miss one, because we were fumbling around with these machines that also apparently only take cash money T__T

- Do Japanese people do it this way, or is there just an app that they use? And if there is an app, can I install it on a non-Japanese Android phone?

Any Info is appreciated. Thank you : )

Thank you! This already clears up a lot! We'll be sure to get a Kitaca right when we get to Hakodate! Only Hakodate and Sapporo are in the "usable area" of the card and as far as I can see the rest of Hokkaido does not have another card either, so that also checks out with Higashi Kushiro Eki looking like it doesn't have a ticket gate - it probably doesn't! But then we don't have to worry about getting a card for the rest of the trip, I'm relieved. I was really worried about this card shortage thing and now my worry has evaporated :3

Still don't know about the reserved seats problem, but at least I know that with regular trains we won't have to go to the machines every time! : ) Phew