Two of the questions travellers ask about the Shinkansen have answers printed on the operators’ own pages. Booking online is not automatically cheaper: Central Japan Railway runs two reservation services for the Tokaido, Sanyo and Kyushu Shinkansen, and the one that carries member prices is the one with an annual fee. And a transport IC card does two different jobs depending on which company’s Shinkansen you are about to board.
smartEX costs nothing to join, and Express Reservation costs 1,100 yen a year
Both services are Central Japan Railway’s. The smartEX pages carry a standing banner pointing readers who want member prices towards Express Reservation, and the Express Reservation fee page opens by stating the charge flatly: 1,100 yen including tax per year. The figure appears three times there, once in that opening line and twice in the passage for Plus EX members who join through a credit card they already hold; the Express Card passage gives the billing timing without the amount, and a third route, for View Express members, is sent to a page of its own. The Plus EX passage is explicit that the service fee is separate from any annual fee charged by the credit card itself. The fee is billed two months after joining, and the page says that if you withdraw inside that window the fee is not collected.
smartEX itself sells a combined ticket and limited express ticket for the Tokaido, Sanyo and Kyushu Shinkansen only, for one to six people, and allows a reservation across up to three connecting trains provided all three use the same class of accommodation. The page also cautions that where a journey continues onto conventional lines, the total of the smartEX price plus the conventional-line fare can come to more than the plain undiscounted ticket for the same trip.
The basic fare is not the only item on either menu. The smartEX product list names four products aimed at particular customers: a version of the smartEX service carrying physical and intellectual disability discounts, an EX U22 discount, an EX 65+ discount and a seat reservation for commuter season-ticket holders. Under a separate heading it names five early-purchase products, numbered 1, 3, 7 and 21, plus a family version of the 7. A further entry, the round-trip discount version of smartEX, sits under its own heading for products whose sale has ended, so a traveller who reads about it elsewhere will not find it on sale.
Reservations open a year ahead at 5:30 and close four minutes before departure
The smartEX sale period runs from 5:30 on the same calendar date one year before travel until four minutes before the scheduled departure time shown in the timetable, around the clock apart from system maintenance. The number of seats released a year ahead is limited. Between one year and one month before travel you choose from a provisional timetable, and the train number, departure time and seat number are settled from 8:00 one month before and sent to the registered email address. Inside the final month, a booking made between 23:30 and 5:30 gives no seat map at all; the seat is fixed after 5:30 and emailed.
Changes are free and unlimited so long as you have not yet entered the gate with your IC card or collected the paper ticket, and the reserved train has not departed. The train you change to can be one departing up to four minutes ahead, within three months of the travel date you originally bought. A refund taken before the reserved train departs costs 320 yen, the same figure for an ordinary reserved seat, a Green Car seat and a non-reserved seat. After departure the ordinary reserved and Green Car refunds fall to a fixed amount set per section, while the non-reserved figure stays at 320 yen. If the train arrives two hours or more late, a per-section amount is refunded. Which trains carry a non-reserved car at all varies by date, and the dates when Nozomi runs with no non-reserved seat are set out separately.
The reserved-seat fare moves with four seasons, and crossing to Kyushu doubles the swing
For travel between 1 April 2026 and 31 March 2027, an ordinary reserved seat on a limited express costs 400 yen more than the regular-season fare in the highest season, 200 yen more in the busy season, and 200 yen less in the off season. The adjustment is not applied once per journey. Travelling from a Tokaido Shinkansen station between Tokyo and Kyoto through onto the Kyushu Shinkansen, the fare is the Tokaido and Sanyo figure for Tokyo to Hakata plus the Kyushu figure for Hakata to Kagoshima-Chuo, and the seasonal adjustment is applied to each of them, so the swing becomes 800 yen more in the highest season, 400 yen more in the busy season and 400 yen less in the off season.
The same page splits the calendar into three groupings, and the three do not share one set of dates. One grouping covers travel inside JR Central, JR West, JR Shikoku and JR Kyushu and between the companies, excluding the Hokuriku Shinkansen and the Shirasagi and Thunderbird services. A second covers travel inside JR East, the Hokkaido Shinkansen, the Hokuriku Shinkansen and those two services. The third, for conventional lines inside JR Hokkaido, states that there is no off season and no busy season and that every day of the year is regular season. A footnote adds that on the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen and JR Kyushu’s conventional limited expresses the off season is not applied. The page already publishes the equivalent calendar for 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2028.
A Green Car seat is priced by distance in six steps, and the express fare drops 530 yen
The Green Car charge is not a percentage. It is a table read against the operating kilometres of the section you actually ride, and the figure is the same whether the Green accommodation is reserved or non-reserved. The table is headed for JR Hokkaido, JR Central, JR West and JR Shikoku and for travel between the JR companies, with the Hokuriku Shinkansen excluded; other cases go to station staff.
| Operating kilometres of the Green Car section | Green Car charge |
|---|---|
| Up to 100 km | 1,300 yen |
| Up to 200 km | 2,800 yen |
| Up to 400 km | 4,190 yen |
| Up to 600 km | 5,400 yen |
| Up to 800 km | 6,600 yen |
| 801 km and over | 7,790 yen |
The charge is not the whole cost, because the express fare changes too. Riding in a Green Car, the express fare is 530 yen less than the ordinary-car reserved-seat fare that applies on the day of travel, and 1,060 yen less where the Tokaido and Kyushu Shinkansen are connected. Subtracting those figures ourselves, a Green Car seat in the up-to-600 km band therefore adds 4,870 yen over an ordinary reserved seat on the same train rather than the 5,400 yen in the table. If you do not leave the Shinkansen gates, two or more Shinkansen trains are calculated through as a single Green Car section, with the Hokuriku Shinkansen and travel across the Tohoku and Hokkaido Shinkansen excluded from that rule. Where the Tokaido and Sanyo section from Tokyo to Hakata is connected to the Kyushu section from Hakata to Kagoshima-Chuo without leaving the gates, the two Green Car charges are added together. GranClass is not priced from this table at all.
An IC card pays the fare on five JR East Shinkansen and only opens the gate on the Tokaido
JR East runs a service called Touch de Go! Shinkansen, and its own explanatory page lists five Shinkansen and seven sections: the Tohoku Shinkansen between Tokyo and Morioka and between Morioka and Shin-Aomori, the Akita Shinkansen between Morioka and Akita, the Yamagata Shinkansen between Fukushima and Shinjo, the Joetsu Shinkansen between Tokyo and Niigata and between Tokyo and Gala Yuzawa, and the Hokuriku Shinkansen between Tokyo and Joetsu-Myoko. The service is for non-reserved seats only, a charged balance is required, and the free start-of-use registration is done once. The same page notes that three of those sections, Morioka to Shin-Aomori, Morioka to Akita and Fukushima to Shinjo, are worked entirely by all-reserved trains, and that an empty ordinary reserved seat may be used on them where the journey is completed inside that same section.
On the Tokaido the card does something else. The smartEX boarding page states that the Shinkansen price is settled on the registered credit card when the reservation is made and is not taken from the IC card balance. The card is the key to the gate, and the gate prints a slip carrying the date, price, section, train and seat, which has to be collected and shown at any on-board check and cannot itself pass a gate. It shows an S where an oversized-baggage seat has been reserved, and it lists the onward train where up to three trains have been booked. If no one on the booking has an IC card designated, ticketless boarding is not available and paper tickets have to be collected for everybody first; where only part of the party boards on a card, the page says the remaining seats can be collected as tickets. Where you enter through a conventional-line gate instead of a direct Shinkansen gate, the card also has to hold a balance to cross the conventional-line concourse.
| IC area | Boarding station | Balance needed to cross the concourse |
|---|---|---|
| Suica | Each station from Tokyo to Odawara | At least the minimum fare |
| Suica | Atami | No balance needed |
| TOICA | Each station from Mishima to Nagoya | No balance needed |
| ICOCA | Each station from Maibara to Shin-Shimonoseki | At least 1 yen |
| SUGOCA | Each station from Kokura to Kagoshima-Chuo | At least 10 yen |
Four card areas are named; Suica fills two rows because Atami is listed apart from the stations between Tokyo and Odawara. No fare is deducted for the walk through the concourse in any of these cases; the balance is a condition of the gate opening.
Anything over 160 centimetres needs a reserved luggage seat, and 1,000 yen if you skip it
The baggage rule is printed on Central Japan Railway’s baggage guidance page, whose banner covers the Tokaido, Sanyo, Kyushu and Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen. A bag whose three sides add up to 160 cm or less goes in the overhead rack, at your feet or in the deck luggage space, with no reservation. A bag whose three sides add up to more than 160 cm and no more than 250 cm is classed as oversized baggage, and carrying it requires a reserved seat of a particular kind, at the same price as an ordinary or Green Car reserved seat. Bringing such a bag aboard without that reservation costs 1,000 yen including tax. A bag whose three sides exceed 250 cm cannot be brought into the carriage at all. Strollers, musical instruments, sports equipment and wheelchairs need no advance reservation whatever their size.
The reserved luggage seats are the rearmost seats of some reserved cars on 16-car Nozomi, Hikari and Kodama services, and the space behind them is shared among those seat holders. Without the reservation the space cannot be used, and the page warns that a large bag in place may stop the seat reclining. In Supreme Class the arrangement differs by car: the two-person car 7 cabin has an adjacent dedicated luggage room holding a bag of 80 by 60 by 40 cm, while the single cabin in car 10 has no dedicated room outside it, and the space beside the seat takes a case within 55 by 40 by 25 cm. Sending bags ahead through the railway’s luggage service is a separate paid arrangement requiring a booking, and it accepts items up to 200 cm across the three sides rather than 250 cm.
Sources Checked
Central Japan Railway (smartEX) — product page for the basic smartEX service
Confirmed the sale period from 5:30 one year before travel to four minutes before scheduled departure, the one to six passengers, the three-train connection limit in the same class, the 320 yen refund figure for all three classes before departure, the per-section refund after departure and for delays of two hours or more, the coverage of the Tokaido, Sanyo and Kyushu Shinkansen only, the seasonal adjustment amounts, the seat-map gap between 23:30 and 5:30, the standing banner directing readers who want member prices to Express Reservation, the four products for particular customers comprising the disability-discount version, EX U22, EX 65+ and the commuter season-ticket seat reservation, the five early-purchase products numbered 1, 3, 7 and 21 plus the family version of the 7, and the round-trip discount version listed as a product whose sale has ended.
https://smart-ex.jp/product/plan/service/
Central Japan Railway (Express Reservation) — page on the annual fee
Confirmed the 1,100 yen including tax annual fee, printed three times on the page, once in the opening line and twice in the Plus EX passage, with the Express Card passage giving the billing timing without the amount, that it is separate from a credit card’s own annual fee, that it is billed two months after joining, that it is not collected if the member withdraws inside that period, and the separate link for View Express members.
https://expy.jp/beginner/annual_fee/
Central Japan Railway — ticket rules page on seasonal reserved-seat express fares
Confirmed the 400 yen, 200 yen and 200 yen adjustments for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, the 800, 400 and 400 yen figures where the Tokaido and Sanyo section is connected to the Kyushu Shinkansen, the three separate groupings, the statement that every day is regular season on JR Hokkaido conventional lines, the exclusion of the off season on the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen and JR Kyushu conventional limited expresses, and the presence of the 2027 to 2028 calendar.
https://railway.jr-central.co.jp/ticket-rule/rule30.html
Central Japan Railway — ticket rules page on Green Car charges for limited express and express trains
Confirmed the six distance bands and the charges of 1,300, 2,800, 4,190, 5,400, 6,600 and 7,790 yen, the heading scoping the table to JR Hokkaido, JR Central, JR West and JR Shikoku and to travel between the JR companies with the Hokuriku Shinkansen excluded, the closing line referring other cases to station staff, that the figure is the same for reserved and non-reserved Green accommodation, the 530 yen and 1,060 yen reductions in the express fare, the through calculation where the Shinkansen gates are not left, the addition of the two charges between Tokyo to Hakata and Hakata to Kagoshima-Chuo, and the exclusion of GranClass.
https://railway.jr-central.co.jp/ticket-rule/rule41.html
East Japan Railway — explanatory page for Touch de Go! Shinkansen
Confirmed the five Shinkansen and seven sections, that the service is for non-reserved seats only, that a free start-of-use registration is required once, and the note that Morioka to Shin-Aomori, Morioka to Akita and Fukushima to Shinjo are worked by all-reserved trains with empty ordinary reserved seats usable inside the same section.
https://www.jreast.co.jp/touchdego/about/
East Japan Railway — Touch de Go! Shinkansen top page
Confirmed that the service is for Shinkansen non-reserved seats, that a charged balance is required, and that the registration operation is done only the first time.
https://www.jreast.co.jp/touchdego/
Central Japan Railway (smartEX) — boarding guide for transport IC cards
Confirmed that the Shinkansen price is settled on the registered credit card at booking and not deducted from the IC card balance, the printed riding slip and that it cannot pass a gate, the S marking for an oversized-baggage seat, the up-to-three-train listing, the rule that ticketless boarding fails where no passenger has a card designated and the note that part of a party may board on a card with the remaining seats collected as tickets, and the four card areas with the balances of at least the minimum fare, none, none, 1 yen and 10 yen.
https://smart-ex.jp/entraining/iccard/
Central Japan Railway — page on bringing baggage onto the Tokaido, Sanyo, Kyushu and Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen
Confirmed the 160 cm threshold, the 160 to 250 cm oversized class and its reserved seat at no extra charge, the 1,000 yen including tax fee for arriving without that reservation, the ban above 250 cm, the exemption for strollers, instruments, sports equipment and wheelchairs, the rearmost-seat arrangement on 16-car Nozomi, Hikari and Kodama services, the reclining warning, the Supreme Class car 7 luggage room at 80 by 60 by 40 cm and the absence of one outside the car 10 cabin, the 55 by 40 by 25 cm space beside the seat, and the 200 cm limit on the send-ahead service.
https://railway.jr-central.co.jp/oversized-baggage/
Last updated: September 2026
