You’re planning your Japan vacation, but you just don’t know how you’re going to get (as an example) from your hotel in Tokyo to Kamakura.  Not to fear!  The kind people at Hitachi have partnered with JR and JTB to bring you Hyperdia.  This handy web-based tool will help you plan your rail travel around Japan.

It’s really quite simple.  You visit the Hyperdia website, and look for the button that says English (unless you’re fluent in reading Japanese!)  You enter the station names of your starting point, and your ending point, optionally any stations you want to stop at along the way, and go to the next screen, where you’ll see something like this: (I used Shinjuku 新宿 as my starting point, and Kamakura 鎌倉) as my ending point, without any waypoints.

Planning Your Route with Hyperdia

From here you simply select the date and time you want to leave, the number of different routes you want to show, and you can even select air routes, shinkansen routes, reserved seats, or add waypoints at this stage.  You can optionally enter your desired arrival time, or select “Average”, which I found gave better options for the results surrounding a particular departure time.  We’ll select “Average”, and 8am, and see what we get:

Hyperdia Rail Planning Search Results

As you can see, it returned five separate options, sorted by travel time, listing the fare and the number of transfers.  Below that I’ve shown the first table that it returns.  You’d leave Shinjuku at 8:08 on the Shonan Shinjuku Line and go straight through Ofuna to Kamakura.  It even provides links to timetables, other information, and maps and hotels, although those links will appear in Japanese.

If there were a transfer along the way it would display that, along with any walking time between stations should that arise.  Here’s an example from Shinjuku to Kamakura, stopping through Enoshima, which requires you get off at the monorail station, and walk the short distance to the Enoden station.

Hyperdia results with transfer and walk time

As this shows (and its more or less what we did) you take the Shonan Shinjuku to Ofuna, transfer to the Shonan Monorail, walk from the monorail station in Enoshima to the Enoden station, and take the Enoden to Kamakura.  If there are bus routes required (as in Hakone) it will even show you those.

It’s really that simple!  It works well for getting around the metro lines in Tokyo, or for planning routes well outside the city.  It only tells you direct fares, so if you’ve got a JR Pass or other type of pass, the fares won’t necessarily apply, but you should make sure your pass is valid on the chosen lines and/or trains.  You can’t make reservations for those routes which require it (that I can tell) from Hyperdia directly, but you’ll be able to plan how and when to get to your destination with ease.  And yes, it is quite accurate.

Don’t forget, though, that you should always check  your information at the station when you leave.

Link: Hyperdia, and Hyperdia in English

[This is the first of a series on planning your trip to Japan, just check the "Planning" link under categories to the right for more articles like this.]

Related posts:

1. Planning: Japan Through Google Earth