Planning Our Trip With The Help Of JR

No, not JR of Dallas. (BTW, if you know who JR is, I think you are as old as me or older! Muahaha!!!!) I am talking about Japan Railways.

We've requested for a new JR train schedule online already and are waiting for it to arrive from New York. Won't be long! Yes... the brochures were sent from New York and not Japan. We've gotten the timetable every year now since 2007.

The JR timetable had been a tremendous help to us when navigating our way through the many train connections in Japan on JR Railways. You can get the brochure free by requesting it here and you can request not only for the train timetable but also brochures of the rest of JR Passes and places of interest in that area.

It may be easier to check the schedule online with Jorudan or our personal favourite, Hyperdia, but when we are out and about and want to reserve seats on trains, it is way easier to have the timetable in hand. We've pretty much cut down miscommunication between us and the JR staff by writing down the exact details of the train and the time we wanted to reserve because we know all the details beforehand.

I've written a similar post about getting a JR Pass here. Don't be afraid to click on the links I've provided in this post for more info on JR Passes.

During our previous travel, we've arranged our itinerary so that almost all the places we went to was covered by JR trains to cut cost on transportation. And with the passes too, we were able to just hop on trains and go to whatever places that took our fancy, without the fear of spending extra cash.