How to buy a Shinkansen Ticket?

Tickets required to ride on Shinkansen　― the difference between Basic Fare and Limited Express charge.

Under the JR ticket structure, there is a Basic Fare for riding any train (the corresponding ticket is called a Basic Fare Ticket). When riding a Shinkansen and certain special express trains, the passenger must also pay the Limited Express Charge (Limited Express Unreserved Seat Tickets, Limited Express Reserved Seat Tickets, Green Car (First Class) and GranClass Car (Premium-First-Class) Tickets come under this).

So, you have to buy both Basic Fare and Limited Express Charge.

Where to buy a Shinkansen Ticket?

You can buy a Shinkansen ticket at

Midori no Madoguchi

Ticket vending machine

at almost all of the JR(Japan Railway) stations.

Here, I’ll illustrate how to buy a ticket at ticket vendor machine.

Let me show you the example assuming that you’ll move from Yokohama to Karuizawa.

This is “Reserved Seat Ticket Vending Machine”.

You can buy a Shinkansen Ticket here.

Can you see the symbols of shinkansen?

1) Touch upper right part of the panel for translation.

You can choose English, Chinese and Korean.

2)You need a basic fare from Yokohama to Karuizawa for local train, and I need a Limited Express Charge from Tokyo to Karuizawa for Shinkansen.

3) Choose the left upper part of “For free-seating on Shinkansen”

4) Select Shinkansen line.

“Tokaido, Sanyou/Kyushu”

⇒ For Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kokura and so on.

“Tohoku, Yamagata, Akita, Hokkaido”

⇒ For Utsunomiya, Fukushima, Yamagata, Sendai, Akita, Aomori and Shin-Hakodate.

“Joetsu, Hokuriku”

⇒For Takasaki, Echigo Yuzawa, Nagaoka, Tsubame-Sanjo, Niigata, Karuizawa, Nagano, Joetsu-Myoko, Toyama and Kanazawa.

Touch the “Joetsu, Hokuriku”

5) Select the station of Shinkansen which you ride on and ride off

6) Select the boarding date.

In this case, Wednesday on December23, 5 days later.

7) Select the number of passengers.

In this case, 1 Adult.

8) Select for basic fare ticket.

In this case, you need a basic fare ticket from Yokohama to Karuizawa.

You can ride a local train from Yokohama to Tokyo and Tokyo to Karuizawa by this ticket.

8) Select the line from Yokohama to Tokyo.

9)Select ticket of outbound or return.