Planning your trips in Japan with "fare amount calculation"

It is difficult for us tourists/foreigners to know the exact amount of fare we are going to spend when we are doing our trip around Japan. The fact that we can't fully understand what is written on some signage makes it more complicated. On some points there are write ups and articles that can guide us in making our itinerary easier. In this post we are going to make use of readily available resources to inform us of the amount of money we are going to spend on our transportation.

To make this guide simpler we will make use of the Suica card. If you don't have a Suica card, then you can follow this blog to guide you on how to avail a Suica card.

1. Plan your trip ahead of time. Estimated times of arrival/departure will help you a lot. If you are not sure as to what train you are going to ride, go to http://www.hyperdia.com/en/. 

This website is an all in one website where you can find train times for both arrivals and departures, routes, fares, additional seat fees and other useful links.

2. Using the Hyperdia page, you can input your place of origin and destination, time (choose your preference, it can be time of arrival at the place of destination or time of departure to your place of origin) and click search.

3. The webpage will display several options from which you can choose that which fits for you.

4. Understanding the page.

 ① Place of Origin　          （※１）
 ② Place of Destination　（※１）
　（※１）Some destinations are being displayed when typing letters at the input box
 ③ Date of Departure/arrival
 ④ Time of Departure/arrival
 ⑤ Option if time and date you provided are departure or arrival

⑥ Select your preferred route, f there are several routes available. They will be displayed on the result page. Routes differs from each other. One maybe the time or the type of train you are going to use. Be careful as to what you are going to follow.
 ⑦ Time of departure/arrival of train from/at the station. In between the time of departure/arrival there is an estimate of how much time the travel consumes. If there are two timetables, it means that one is the arrival time at the station where you will transfer and the other time is the departure time from the "transfer" station.
 ⑧ Route. This column displays the several routes you will have to pass in order to get to your destination. For the given example, if I am going to Tokyo Skytree and my point of origin is from Soga station, I need to go first to Chiba station then take another ride from Chiba Station to Kinshicho Station via the JR Sobu LIne Rapid Service for Tokyo. Please take note of the fare bracketing in the "Fare" column section. The bracketing will give information if you are going to exit the station before transfering to another train. From Kinshicho Station, you have to exit from Kinshicho station, take the Tokyo Metro Line and get off at Oshiage Station before heading to Tokyo Skytree. Note that I have only selected this route as an example, there are several options to choose from.
 ⑨ The fare column will display the fare amount. The fare amount is based on the standard fare of the train line. If you use a Suica card, this amount may be reduced by some percentage. Using this display, you can also choose the cheapest way to travel to your destination.
 ⑩ Seat Fare. Notice that there is a drop down menu list in this column. If you want to have a reserved seat, then you can also view from here the cost of the reserved seat.
 ⑪ There are other useful links on the website. The links are usually for maps, hotel bookings, taxis, restaurants, e.t.c.

5. Using the webpage displayed by Hyperdia, you can add the total amount to reveal your travel fare expenses that are going to incur on the your way to your destination.

I hope this guide helped you in having an idea on your fare amount to get to your destination.

Happy reading. Follow my blog for more articles.

If you have any comments or suggestions to improve this article just add your thoughts below in the comment section. It will be highly appreciated to improve my article and make it more useful to the expat community.