I’ve been trying to find the cheapest way to get from the Kansai Area, leaving anywhere from Himeji to Kyoto and arrive in Tokyo.
I have to go up to Tokyo for a one day trip, and I only need to be there for a few hours. Here are my options:
- Leave very early in the morning and drive about 7 hours up there, then drive back after my meeting. The estimated cost will be about 12,000 yen each way so about 24,000 yen.
This would be SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER if I could go on a weekend because of the new law in Japan that limits highway tolls to 1000 yen on weekends. (Kansai to Tokyo would cost more because you have to change highways, but still I think come in under 4,000 yen.)
This option will be tiring and probably involve the purchase of large quantities of coffee, snacks, and parking area goodies in order to stay awake driving 14 hours in a day.
If it were a weekend, I would drive up and back. The exhaustion factor makes spending some more money for a hotel kind of attractive. That would also give me some time to enjoy Tokyo.
- Taking an overnight bus up and back.
The good thing about this option is the amount of time you get to spend in Tokyo (or Osaka if you are doing the reverse). There are no hotel charges because you are sleeping on the bus.
The bad things are that the buses tend to be smokey, the seats don’t recline much, there is a chance of noisiness, and check out the photo to see what happen to one of these overnight buses recently. You can get tickets for under 6 or 7 thousand yen up and back. I know it sounds pretty cheap, but if you are traveling with a partner, the combined costs are no different from driving.
Also, you are killing two nights going up and back so it does make the trip longer and harder to schedule (if you have to get back to work).
- An overnight bus up and Shinkansen back.
You don’t get any of the measley roundtrip discounts offered by bus companies and JR, but that’s not really significant. This could be a good option if you can manage the bus and you want to max your time in Tokyo but have to be back early on the third morning for work or something.
This trip should cost about 9,000 to 12,000 yen to get back by Shinkansen depending on your area in Kansai, and the bus should be about 6,000 yen or so. Let’s consider this trip at a cost of 17,000 yen or so per person. Not bad, and the reverse pattern also works (shinkansen up and bus back) if you want to leave from work one day and have a full day to sightsee.
- Travel package from a travel agent.
These often involve flights to Tokyo (with airline companies trying to keep all the planes filled to the max for domestic flights. They also include a hotel. I have seen some as low as 18,000 yen per person. This is very convenient if you are a person who likes to stay in a business hotel every once in a while.
If you are considering this option you should also factor in the time and costs of traveling to and from the airports you’ll be using… this could be the deal breaker.
- Shinkansen up and back in the same day.
If you need to be there in the afternoon, this can be a low stress option. This is how a lot of Japanese companies would do it. Wake up early, get the shinkansen, do what you gotta do, and back on the shinkansen. Should cost around 20,000 yen round trip per person.
The drawbacks are the lack of fun time at the destination, and the cost. For 20,000 yen, I would prefer to either have more time in Tokyo or at least a nice quiet stay in a business hotel.
- Shinkansen up, stay in a hotel, and come back by Shinkansen.
The cost as described above plus the cost of a hotel makes this too expensive unless you get a good businessman’s special deal at a travel agency. This is may end up costing more than the flights.
- Drive up to the Tokyo area (or down to Kansai if you are doing this in reverse), stay in a hotel and drive back the next day.
Things to be watch out for are parking costs in the destination city when you are not in the hotel. (Some hotels may let you leave the car in their parking lot even after you check out so don’t be afraid to ask… also don’t get your hopes up).
This is a great option if you enjoy driving and want to stop at places along the way. Also, if you happen to be traveling with a big group, driving is a great way to keep per person costs down.
A fine option if it were the season, but it’s not.
I haven’t decided what to do yet. As I mentioned before, if it were a weekend, I would be driving up without hesitation, as the effort of driving would definitely be worth making a trip to Tokyo for two people for 4,000 yen each way.
I am leaning toward driving and staying at a cheap hotel somewhere along the way. Anybody have any tricks I missed?