About local rail passes and cards - which one to get?

[Kokujou]

So, it's finally happening, we're going to japan end of the month. for around 30 days. We are 2 persons and this is how my travel will look like:
we will arrive in tokyo and take the next flight that i will book at the time of arrival to the new chitose airport. So:
New Chitose Airport -> Noboribetsu (around 4 days)
Noboribetsu -> Tomakomai
Tomakomai -> Sendai (Taiheiyo Ferry)
Sendai -> Matsushima (around 3 days)
Matsushima -> Nikko (around 3 days)
Nikko -> Fujikawaguchiko (around 3 days)
Fujikawaguchiko -> Shinshiro (around 2 days)
Shinshiro -> Nara (around 3 days)
Nara -> Takehara (around 4 days)
Takehara -> Tokyo (probably flying but everything is possible) where we fly back home
we will have some days left that we can allocate here and there and spend more time as we want, so it's not getting stressful.

Now the question:
1. what cards do i need to get? My GPT research found that i need 3, Suica, KitaCa and IcoCa as well as some App to book Shinkansen Tickets which are not usable by those cards (??)
2. i heard that there are passes besides the big and way too expensive JR Pass. like the Noboribetsu Area pass, which sounds like a good deal. so are there other passes that could fit my travel route. but in the case of the Noboribetsu area pass it wasn't even listed with the other passes, so there are probably way more than i can imagine.
3. do you have general tips for such a big route covering basically the whole north-eastern coast of japan?

For all the kind souls who took the time to read to the end: thank you very much! ^-^

 

[mdchachi]

1. You can book shinkansen tickets the old fashioned way by going to a train station and using the machine or the manned window. I'm pretty sure all three of those cards are interoperable and can be used nationwide. Get whatever card you can get at your first stop. If you can't get a card just pay and buy tickets as you go.
2. There are not that many JR rail companies. You can go to each one and check what special deals or passes may be available. Maybe better to view the Japanese web site with a auto-translating browser since the English versions are often not equivalent.
3. Sounds like a great trip. I can't think of anything specific right now.

 

[Kokujou]

2. There are not that many JR rail companies. You can go to each one and check what special deals or passes may be available. Maybe better to view the Japanese web site with a auto-translating browser since the English versions are often not equivalent.

sicne i'm traveling to many regions, i heard from GPT-kun, that there are different JR companies and the tickets are not 100% interchangable. so it means it could happen that you try to put your suica and it just neglects it. that's how it was explained to me at least. it'd be great news if you say that's not the case.

as it was explained to me it is: Suica covering the east japanese region, Pasmo covering the tokyo area, Icoca covering the west and KitaCa covering the north.

 

[mdchachi]

Maybe not 100% but probably 99.87%. If that happens, the machine rejects you and you simply go to the ticket machine or manned window and buy a ticket with cash. I did have a problem like this last summer on the Mooka Railway. But it turned out they didn't accept any IC cards at all so it didn't matter which one I had. By the time we figured it out we didn't have enough time to get a proper ticket and missed the train and had to wait over an hour for the next one. But we discovered a Vietnamese coffee shop nearby and it all worked out.

 

[Kokujou]

that's a bit of a relief. then it really doesn't matter... phew... good thing i checked. never trust ChatGPT with important questions XD

and what about the other question? do you know any passes or discounts that could make my long journey a bit less expensive? Or do you think using Suica and others is usually the right way to go unless you travel shinkansen daily.

 

[mdchachi]

that's a bit of a relief. then it really doesn't matter... phew... good thing i checked. never trust ChatGPT with important questions XD

and what about the other question? do you know any passes or discounts that could make my long journey a bit less expensive? Or do you think using Suica and others is usually the right way to go unless you travel shinkansen daily.

No way to be sure without looking but I think it may not be worth spending too much time on. Most likely any deals won't save that much money and they won't align with your needs.

 

[Kokujou]

yeah sounds reasonable :/ if a shinkansen would drive into every corner of japan then it'd probably be worth taking the JR Pass XD but they're not even driving to gifu. need to skip a lot there 'cause the bad routes, no matter where you're from, you take a minimum of 5 hours.

shirakawa-go takayama, hida, they're all close by but suffering a whole day to get there... probably we will not have enough time.

i really long for the moment we invent teleportation.

 

[thomas]

I concur with @mdchachi: buy Shinkansen tickets at the station (cash or CC) and use IC cards (Suica, Pasmo) for local transport. Some regional bus lines issue their own IC cards, but you can also pay in cash. Suica can be used across the Greater Tokyo area (JR and metro), on JR East lines, and in other cities like Sendai, Niigata, Osaka, and Kyoto . They are also compatible with IC systems such as TOICA (JR West), Manaca (Nagoya), and PiTaPa (Chugoku, Kansai and parts of Chubu).

We are an affiliate of Japan Experience, which sell JR Rail Passes: 7-day tickets for 332 € and 14-day tickets for 531 €. Depending on your itinerary, you might still save money with one of their passes.

 

[Kokujou]

I concur with @mdchachi: buy Shinkansen tickets at the station (cash or CC) and use IC cards (Suica, Pasmo) for local transport. Some regional bus lines issue their own IC cards, but you can also pay in cash. Suica can be used across the Greater Tokyo area (JR and metro), on JR East lines, and in other cities like Sendai, Niigata, Osaka, and Kyoto. They are also compatible with IC systems such as TOICA (JR West), Manaca (Nagoya), and PiTaPa (Chugoku, Kansai and parts of Chubu).

We are an affiliate of Japan Experience, which sell JR Rail Passes: 7-day tickets for 332 € and 14-day tickets for 531 €. Depending on your itinerary, you might still save money with one of their passes.

yeah i already calculated but first of all we have 30 days not 21 and most regions that we're going to don't even feature shinkansen routes. so it's cheaper to just buy the tickets raw :/
this is why i thought i could go with smaller passes that only feature part of my travel for a shorter period, since they don't feature shinkansen they're cheaper.

The Sapporo-Noboribetsu Area Pass I heard of only costs 9.000 Yen for 4 days, i thought i could maybe find more stuff like that.
or maybe there is some less known JR pass not featuring shinkansen, that'd also be nice

 

[mdchachi]

Yes to really take advantage of the pass you'd have to do a lot of Shinkansen travel.

The Sapporo-Noboribetsu Area Pass I heard of only costs 9.000 Yen for 4 days, i thought i could maybe find more stuff like that.
or maybe there is some less known JR pass not featuring shinkansen, that'd also be nice

To search for passes like that I would go to each rail companies Japanese web page using an auto-translating browser such as Chrome or Edge to check if there are any applicable deals.