Booking Japan rail travel from the USA

tl;dr

• “Japan Bullet Train” website issues: While the service appeared convenient, showing seat availability and accepting Chase Visa, it didn’t secure the tickets immediately. After 24 hours, they canceled the reservation due to “full occupancy,” even though the website still showed availability.
• Pre-booking Japan travel is tricky: Historically, it required visiting a Japanese travel agency in person to pick up physical passes. Online booking services like Japan Bullet Train are a more recent option.
• Direct booking is better: Using JR-EAST’s official website guarantees ticket purchases. However, the English site has a dated design, long maintenance periods, and quirks like rejecting some credit cards (e.g., Chase Visa).
• Booking with JR-EAST: After account setup, booking resulted in a QR code for physical ticket pickup. However, the process can confuse newcomers, especially with dropdown menus of unfamiliar locations.
• Cost difference: Japan Bullet Train charged 50% more than booking directly with JR-EAST

Visitors looking to pre-book local travel in Japan know that it isn’t always straightforward. We needed to book travel to visit our friends, Kozyndan, which can luckily be done by booking a single local express train from Shinjuku that doesn’t involve any transfers. We heard that Japan Bullet Train was a service that some of their friends from the USA had used successfully, so I gave the service a try. Having an online service to use was a change from previous trips, which required physically going to a Japanese travel agency location to pick up physical passes (which is/was common when purchasing rail passes from abroad).

Japan Bullet Train showed plenty of seat availability on a train at the correct time, and it was straightforward to book using a Chase Visa. However, when I received the email it said in the notes, “An operator will now proceed with arrangements of your reservation. At this moment, the confirmation of reserved seats … are not finalized.” It also provided a link to a YouTube video and support site saying, “How to pick up Shinkansen ticket with QR code,” which confused me into thinking that we were booking a Shinkansen train (we weren’t).

24 hours later, I received an email saying, “Notification of Cancellation Due to Full Occupancy: We regret to inform you that the tickets you requested were fully booked during the arrangement process, and as a result, we are unable to secure seats for you.” I went back to the Japan Bullet Train website, which continued to show seat availability for the train we tried to book.

After some research, I learned that booking directly through the official JR-EAST website was a better path–purchasing a ticket actually meant that a ticket was purchased. The English website has a strong Japanese feel in design and fonts, which is to say that it’s utilitarian and functional but has quirks like shutting down for long periods of time for maintenance and being upset if you navigate too quickly.

The standard payments friction was present. I was forced to put in a credit card when creating an account, and no amount of effort (including calling Chase) would allow me to use a Chase credit card, so I ended up entering in an AMEX card, which it seemed to accept.

After setting up an account, booking was relatively straightforward and eventually led to a QR code that could be used to pick up physical tickets at a specified location and date. If you aren’t familiar with Japan and the various locations the simple drop down includes, this can be really confusing, and if your travel plans are fluid, this can also be a challenge.

Note that the cost of booking through Japan Bullet Train was 50% more than booking directly with JR-EAST. For 2 adults and 2 children in the green car, Japan Bullet Train charged JPY33,180. The same train was JPY22,260 direct from JR-EAST.

If you’re looking to travel a lot on trains in Japan, purchasing a pass can save money. The JR-EAST website can be used to this, but you should do research to make sure you’re getting the right one!