About Nippon Routes

Nippon Routes exists because most Japan itineraries are written once and never priced. Fares change – JR East raised its in March 2026 for the first time in thirty-nine years, and the Japan Rail Pass rises again on 1 October 2026 – and a route page with round numbers on it is a route page nobody can use.

So every travel leg here is a record with a fare, a source and the date we checked it. Pages that compare things are computed from those records rather than written by hand, which is why the JR Pass verdict on each route shows its arithmetic.

What we will not do

We do not publish a number we cannot source. Where something is not published – and a surprising amount is not – the page says so instead of estimating. We do not reprint aggregator prices for things the operator publishes itself. And we do not recommend a pass, a tour or a service because it pays us; the JR Pass page concludes against buying one on most of our own routes.

Our writers

The bylines on this site are editorial personas rather than photographed people, and their portraits were generated, which the privacy page states in full. The research, the sourcing and the arithmetic behind the pages are real, and every figure links to where it came from.